Alternate Strings
by Kurt
Summary: An 'alternate sequel' to Daddy's Girl. Clarice Starling escaped the GD eleven years ago with her daughter now her peace is threatened. If you haven't read Daddy's Girl, you might want to.
1. Default Chapter

_                Author's note: _

_             In a review of my fic 'Daddy's Girl', Lecterlicious had commented in a review that she would always wonder what would happen if Clarice had made it out of the house that night with Susana. I find it an interesting premise.  _

_                Which brings us to this: an alternate-history sequel.  In 'Daddy's Girl', Clarice eventually lost her fight to maintain her identity.  This fic takes the premise that she won, and escaped, and got back to the US with her daughter in tow.  _

Here at the FBI, things are just a little happier than they are normally.  It's a little brighter and a little busier, and the people who work here have made a bit more of an effort to cheer up the place.  Today is a special day, you know.   It's April of 2020, a bright happy day here in Virginia, and  there's a field trip coming through, you know.  Not just any field trip; this is a school from an area where a lot of FBI agents live.   So of course the people who work here want to make the place spiffy.  After all, it is their children who are visiting.  There are those who say the FBI can be a voracious beast chewing on those who labor for it, but that's not the sort of impression that the brass wants to make on their children.  Some of these kids are old enough to understand that their parents may, at some point, give their lives in service of justice.  The FBI wants to show them that it's just a regular old fuzzy bunny as a workplace.  

                Is Special Agent Clarice M. Starling here among this subterranean hallway, you ask?  I'm afraid not.  Special Agent Clarice M. Starling vanished in 1998 and resurfaced in 2009 with a young five-year-old daughter in tow.   It was a very tough time; Clarice Starling's daughter _looked _a lot like her, but those maroon eyes gave away her paternity pretty clearly.  

                Clarice Starling?  She was given a sealed name change in 2010, along with her daughter, under the auspices of the Witness Protection Program.  She eschewed plastic surgery, though, and she did not want to be resettled.  The _Tattler _tried for a couple of years to get access to her new identity.  It only stopped after one of its reporters went just a wee bit too far.  He's serving five years in a federal prison now.  After that, subsequent reporters decided that stories with headlines like 'BIGFOOT SIGHTED IN COLORADO SPRINGS' and 'EGYPTIAN MUMMY COMES TO LIFE' and 'FILTH IN YOUR BREAD!' were perhaps better stories to feature.   

                But sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight.  There _is _a woman who works here, attached to the Investigative Support Unit.  Back when Clarice Starling first became an FBI agent, it was called Behavioral Sciences.  Not any more, though.   

                The one true constant is that everything changes.  

                Clarice Starling?  Don't ask too many questions or press too hard.  If you satisfy yourself with asking where Clarice Starling is, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies will sing you a lovely song of _We are not authorized to disclose, the safety of Ms. Starling and her daughter are paramount, _and the inevitable chorus of_ The court has ordered the records sealed; there is nothing we can do.  _Press too hard and you might find yourself sharing a cell with an unfortunate _Tattler _reporter.  

                A hungry world has slavered for details of what Clarice Starling did with Hannibal Lecter for eleven years down in Argentina.  The fact that she came back with a maroon-eyed daughter has led them to believe that she _must _have some story to tell about the years she spent down there in his clutches.  But over the years interest has waned.  The woman who works here has a very normal life.  

                Her name is Claire Starkey, this woman here in what was once Behavioral Sciences.  Her ID identifies her as a Federal Investigator.  Officially, she is somewhere in the void that Will Graham once was; she is not a sworn agent of the FBI, but she has a gun and identification entitling her to carry it.  She works here as a sort of consultant in Investigative Support.  She is authorized to see the same files that the real, standard FBI profilers are.  

                For eleven years she slept; for eleven more years she has been content.  The first few years had been tumultuous.  Her daughter had taken a great deal of adjusting to the new reality that her father was no longer here.  The FBI was also _very _interested in Susana's father herself.  And they did have some interest in just why it was that Clarice Starling had disappeared for eleven years and returned with a monster's daughter in tow.

                Had it not been for the good graces of Special Agent Ardelia Mapp Bridell, things might have ended much differently: there was quiet talk in the corridors of power of incarcerating Clarice Starling, shipping her daughter quietly off to some state where they could keep her in a state home, and prying whatever information they wanted from both of them in complete privacy.  

                Much had changed with Clarice Starling in those years; much had also changed with Ardelia Mapp.  She had married and had a daughter of her own, two years younger than Susana.  But one thing had remained constant:  when Clarice needed her, she was there.  A fully qualified attorney, she defended Clarice's interests with a rare ferocity.  It was through her that the deal was struck: identity protection, a position with the FBI doing what she had always wanted to do, and amnesty for _l'affaire Verger.  _In return, Clarice agreed to undergo hypnotic-regression therapies to attempt to gain what insight there might be into Dr. Lecter's ways and means of hiding from the authorities.

                There had been much usable information gained from those sessions, but there was no final success in catching the evil psychiatrist.  He remains free and unknown to the law now as he did then.  

                All the same, Claire Starkey is content with her life.  She has a job doing what she always wanted to do.  She has a home and a sixteen-year-old daughter.  Yes, it's true that her daughter rolls her eyes at her decrepit old mother more than Claire would like, but Susana Starkey is sixteen.  Such behavior is expected.  The important thing is that she has been safe from Hannibal Lecter for lo these eleven years, safe, and happy.  Claire has achieved a rare and real peace one does not expect to see in a woman who hunts serial killers for a living.  

                It's sort of an open secret here in Behavioral Sciences that Claire Starkey is Clarice Starling.  Everyone knows, but it is a secret held within the bounds of the department.  Occasionally someone may call her Clarice at work, but whenever there are outsiders around, it's strictly 'Investigator Starkey' or 'Claire'.  The department is protective of her.  

                And her daughter is here today, don't you know, for the field trip.  Ardelia Mapp has dropped by the subterranean offices.  Yes, Clarice knows her friend is married and that she is now part of the socio-sexual corporation of 'Mr. And Mrs. Harold Bridell', but to her, 'Delia will always be Ardelia Mapp.  Clarice and Ardelia have amused themselves by mimicking the sheer horror their teenage daughters will evince if they see their mothers while on this field trip.   Susana and her friend Amika have expressed ardent displeasure against their mothers 'making a scene' – making a scene apparently signifying noting the existence of their daughters while on this field trip.   Such a thing is beyond pain to a teenager.  In order to avoid humiliating their offspring, they have elected to keep from keeping tabs on the tour as it runs through the lower intestine of Quantico.  On the other hand, if the girls should happen to see them as they go through Behavioral Sciences, then they must suffer the consequences.  Perhaps maternal recognition will cause the two to turn into skeletons.  Clarice and Ardelia will just have to see.  

Right now they've been moving through the crime labs, and Clarice can hear them from where she sits.  The FBI has a tour guide for these sorts of things, and he is engaged in herding the group of bored teenagers through the labs.  She can hear him now, sounding bizarrely like Your Cruise Director Julie, and she can't help but snicker.  

"This is the FBI's DNA scanning labs," the tour guide says.    "Around the turn of the century, DNA testing technology took a few days to work.  These days, we can do it in minutes.   The FBI has the largest known DNA database in the world.  All incarcerated persons are required to submit a DNA sample.  All FBI agents are, as well.  Our scanning technology can verify a person's DNA pattern without a shadow of a doubt."  

Ardelia is sitting across from Clarice, and they share a grin in the office.  They can just see their daughters standing in the shuffling mass of bored teenagers.   Ardelia parodies her own daughter by adopting a burlesque expression of agony, rolling her eyes so that just a sliver of brown iris shows just below her upper eyelids.  Clarice grins, rolls her own eyes, and mouths the word _Booo-ring. _They try not to giggle.

The tour guide continues.  "Just a few flakes of skin or a hair is all we need.  Our DNA database is also capable of determining if two people are related.  It is the only DNA matching program in the world that has the official blessing of the United States Supreme Court.  We can determine if two people are blood relatives with complete accuracy.  Scanning someone's DNA takes only a moment or two.  Would one of you like to volunteer?"  

Clarice tries to return to her work; the words do not register on her.  She doesn't hear the tour guide say that all he needs is a strand of hair.  She doesn't really pay attention to the muttered giggles, or the ever-familiar hum of the DNA scanner doing its work.   The tour guide announcing that it will take just a few minutes goes unremarked.  She takes a long swig of coffee and tries to settle into the file she is reading.  

But a few minutes later, something does attract her attention.  From the room down the hall comes a sudden shrill computer alarm.  _Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep….  _

                "What the hell?" the tour guide asks.  

                _Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep _goes the alarm, and suddenly Clarice Starling knows what has happened, knows it in the pit of her stomach where all bad news resides.  Claire and Susana Starkey have had a pleasant life for these past eleven years.  But Clarice has never told her daughter who she really is, or who her father really is.   Susana has known that her father was an Argentine man and that Clarice left him when she was five years old.  She has claimed to have little memory of him.   But she does not know who her parents are.  

                Well, she didn't know five minutes ago. 

                The coffee in her mouth suddenly burns her sinuses as she gags.  There is a big hot jolt of discomfort, then a feeling that reminds her of swimming at the beach and getting water up her nose.  But it isn't water; it's coffee, black with extra sugar, and she sneezes it out her nose with a painful choked sneeze.  Ardelia Mapp's white blouse now sports a stain that matches her skin.  

                Clarice means to apologize, but she can't.  Her throat is partially charred and her sinuses clogged by the coffee's unexpected exit.  She can only look at her friend and mouth _I'm sorry. _ Her blue eyes are wide with horror.  Dread puddles in her gut like heavy, bitter oil.  As she rises, her knees jelly and it takes a conscious act of will to make them firm again.  With a look of horror on her face, she turns and takes a few jerky steps out into the hall.  The forensics labs are only a few yards away, but to Clarice it seems like miles.  

                _Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep, _the universal sound of the shit hitting the fan in the Age of Silicon, and Clarice Starling knows that her pleasant little life with her daughter is now changed if not gone.  A simple field trip has changed her life and her daughter's life irrevocably and forever.  It is with some horror that she rounds the threshold of the door and stares inside.  

                _Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep, _the shrill electronic tone warbling in the ears of the stunned teenagers, and in the front stands Susana Starkey with a stunned look upon her face.  Her maroon eyes are blank and wide.  Next to her is the tour guide, the thrice-damned tour guide who has ruined Clarice Starling's life in just a few moments, and his eyes are blank with surprise too.  

                On a nearby monitor screen is a twisting DNA helix with the name SUSANA STARKEY written next to it.  On the bottom of the screen are words that chill Clarice Starling's blood.  

                _MATERNAL MATCH FOUND: STARLING, CLARICE M/ FBI EMPL/WITSEC ID 21330654/ALT ID STARKEY CLAIRE _

If it was just that, she could deal with it and explain to her stunned daughter later.  But there is more.  Blood tells a fascinating tale, and Susana's blood is not done telling hers.  

                _PATERNAL MATCH FOUND: _and the next words are ones Clarice would've been happy never to see again, but just to rub it in a little more they are outlined in red and blink on the screen to make sure _everyone _pays attention to these words that read _LECTER HANNIBAL MD/VICAP FILE #6223421234/10 MOST-WANTED LIST.  _ 

                There is a laser printer not far from the monitor and the computer and Clarice's daughter staring blankly at her.  Paper is humming out of it.  Susana isn't looking at it; she has turned to stare at her mother framed in the doorway.  She is the same person she was this morning; she wears the same jeans and sneakers and T-shirt, but she has just learned she is _not _the person she thought she was, and neither is her mother…_or_ her father. 

                But Clarice _is _looking at it, and her stomach clenches and roils.  All the kids turn to stare at her as Susana does, looking equally confused.  Perhaps Susana will be arrested, they think.  Perhaps Susana has a _seee-cret.  _It sure _looks _like she does, that's what the faces of the kids say.  A few of the kids glance over at the laser printer, and Clarice glances over at it and finally looks away, unable to bear the shock of it anymore.  

                Out of the printer steadily crawl Hannibal Lecter's face and fingerprints.

                Mother and daughter stare at each other.  There is a strong resemblance.  They have the same delicate features and the same brown hair.  Right now, they also have the same deathly pallor and expression of shock.  

                "This…this is wrong," Susana says, and her tone shakes and jitters.   She stares at the feared name of Dr. Lecter on the screen and then looks at that merciless face printed in living color on the paper. "It's _got _to be wrong.  That's not…that's not my father, is it?"  

                Silence holds sway in the room after her words drop off.  Clarice's gut churns.  She had _meant _to tell Susana.  Some day.   She really had.  But not…not like this.  Her throat clogs, but she must speak.   It takes another conscious act of will to force herself to form words.  

                Tears of pain and shame form in her eyes.  But she cannot lie. "I'm sorry, Susana," she says in a choked whisper.      "It is."  


	2. Into Thin Air

                When things are going smoothly, a week can pass in the blink of an eye.  When things aren't going so smoothly, a week can take forever.  For Clarice Starling, the days of the week after her daughter learned her true heritage passed like a life sentence.   

                Work was hard, but at work she had other things to keep her busy.  Serial killers and the like kept her busy.  She could focus there because she had to.  It was not exaggeration to say that lives depended on her doing her work adequately, and that gave her the ability to put aside her own twanging pains and fears.  

                Home was far, far worse.  Before, she'd thought she had a pretty good relationship with her daughter – about as good as mother-teenage daughter relationships got.  Now, Susana circled her like a distrustful big cat approaching a zookeeper who had once been trusted.  When she met Clarice's eyes, there was a chasm behind her own, a chasm that had not been there before.  Clarice had little idea how she might cross it.  

                Dinner became a painfully distant process consisting mostly of clinking forks on plates and strained small talk.  Clarice tried a few times to broach the subject of why she had never told Susana who she was, or who Susana's father was.  No warm reception, or even attempts at reception, greeted her attempts.   Most of the time, Susana would simply retreat into stony silence.  Once it provoked a hysterical response that Clarice, admittedly, took the bait to.  That had ended in a screaming match that had ended with the slamming of the door to Susana's room.  

                _It's just a phase _was what a few people at Behavioral Sciences told her, but it didn't help much.  It wasn't just a phase.  She had left a pleasant lie be, and fate had been unkind to that pleasant lie.  It didn't help that Susana was of the rebellious age, but there was a part of her that never quite let her forget:  _If you'd told her before this wouldn't have happened the way it did.  _

She steeled herself and figured that it was a lot to take.  Of course, at sixteen she hadn't had to deal with such problems.  She'd had a bunk in the Lutheran Home in Montana and food in her stomach and that was about it.  Like Susana, she had lost her father.  Unlike Susana, she had lost hers to death.  She found herself wondering if Susana resented her for taking her away from Dr. Lecter.  

                That was crazy.  It had to be; didn't Susana realize what the man had done?  Clarice might've made her mistakes as a parent, but for Christ's sake, Dr. Lecter was a _murderer.  _A man who killed people and turned their innards into an _amuse-bouche _for the Baltimore Philharmonic's Board of Directors.  She didn't exactly think he was the sort of man you wanted your daughter to associate with, even if he had fathered her.  

                On Thursday evening following the day of the unmasking, Susana broke her distance, asking if she could sleep over at Amika's on Friday.  That was just fine with Clarice.  Amika was Ardelia's daughter, and she had her head screwed on pretty straight.  Besides, Clarice found herself hoping that maybe Susana would open up to Ardelia.  Perhaps she was just too close to it all.  Perhaps some time away from home was what Susana needed to clear her head and get back onto something resembling a normal footing.  After all, it had to be a shock to discover your dad was on the FBI's Ten Most-Wanted List.  

Clarice spent that Friday working as best she could.  Instead of the prickly tension and relentless internal guilt that had been the unpleasant norm for the past few days, she felt something new:  a sense of cautious hope.  It sure beat the tension and guilt, that was for goddam sure.  

                Ardelia herself was busy with her own work and wasn't able to make it down to Behavioral Sciences.  That was fine.  'Delia would feed the two girls.  Probably to the point of bursting.  Then, if she knew her daughter and her daughter's best friend, they would stay awake all night and talk.  Maybe about boys, although the idea made Clarice vaguely uncomfortable.  Maybe they would just watch movies and coo over whatever dark-haired movie star they liked this week.  

                So Clarice was cautiously optimistic and carefully hopeful.  Besides, there was a peace in knowing she could work late without feeling guilty.  And a night to herself wasn't a bad thing, either.  She hadn't really had that much interest in men; between her job and Susana she was too busy.  Plenty of women had horror stories about their ex-husbands, but when your ex-husband brainwashed you and held you captive for eleven years, it tended to affect your later view of the male side of the species.  

                It had been a while since she treated herself, so she did.  She worked until six without that normal, nagging voice in the back of her head that said _Get home and feed your daughter, she needs you, you know, _that started nagging away at her at, say, five-oh-one or so.  

Shopping was also something she liked, and careful sifting in her usual search-and-destroy manner turned up a pair of pumps for an astonishing price.  Dr. Lecter had liked buying wildly overpriced gourmet stuff.  Clarice took a different pleasure in shopping; finding something nice for the best price she could gave her a sort of cold pleasure she connected with hunting.  And like the hunters who had come before her, Clarice Starling came home with a pair of good quality, sensible work shoes that she had patiently hunted down and made her own.  

Dinner at a local sushi bar was a reward she rarely gave herself.  Susana liked sushi, and had gotten her into it.  She connected things like that with Dr. Lecter, and in the past it had made her uncomfortable.  The sort of things he liked had unpleasant memories attached to them.  Dresses and stockings made her think of the years she had spent as his moronically grinning little doll.  Gourmet food made her think of all the times she'd been his platinum blonde arm-candy.  Hell, even that goddam song about 'Barbie Girl' gave her the heebie-jeebies.  _You can brush my hair…undress me everywhere…_  Susana had liked the song when she was seven or eight.  Clarice hated it with a passion.  She'd lived it.  

Yet sushi was something that wasn't bad, once she managed to take away the shade Dr. Lecter cast over that sort of thing.  It was good, and she liked it, and she was full at the end.  After that, she took in a movie, one of the real weepy gooey ones that Susana flatly refused to go to with her.  It was nice to have some time to herself, just herself.  Susana was being taken care of and she didn't need to worry.  She was still cautious, but she was hopeful, and even cautious hope was a pleasant experience.  

She went to bed and slept well for the first time in a few days.  

And now?  Saturday morning starts for Clarice as any other.  She wakes up in the comfortable little house she owns; her comfortable bedroom surrounded with the things she has collected over the years.    Down the hall is Susana's room.  Clarice rolls out of bed and puts on her slippers.  A square of sunlight shines on her floor from the bedroom window, quartered by the casement.  She shuffles over and enjoys the sunlight on her skin for a few moments.  It is a warm and bright morning, and she is happy.  

The old urge to wake up her daughter arises, strong as ever.  Susana will remain in bed for hours on Saturday unless Clarice pries her out of bed.  Then she remembers that Susana is sleeping over at a friend's, and the odds are good she's stayed up all night and will be exhausted and cranky.  Besides, there is the hope of peace, and Clarice is willing to let her daughter have a couple of hours if it helps realize that peace.  

So she fixes herself a cup of coffee.  It is hot and good, strong the way she likes it.  Breakfast is a leisurely affair of scrambled eggs and sausages.  Damn the cholesterol, they taste fine.  A bit of salt helps the eggs along.   She flips through the paper idly as she eats. 

Then a good book serves to amuse her for a few hours.  Her library is full of books on psychology, and she carefully goes over an article on violent offenders that interests her.  It is eleven o'clock by the time she finishes.  Okay.  Time to call her daughter.  Kid's had enough time to sleep.  

The familiar beeps and boops that spell out Ardelia's number sound in her ear.  For a moment she hopes that her gamble has paid off.  Will Susana be cooled out now?  She hopes so.  

Ardelia answers.  "Hello," she says firmly.  Clarice smiles to hear her voice.  They are old friends, and it has been a source of quiet pleasure to Clarice that their daughters, too, our best friends.  

"'Delia, it's me.  Hope Susana wasn't too much trouble last night.  Can I talk to her?"  

A few beats pass.  Ardelia lets out a sudden breath and then inhales sharply.  

"Susana?" Ardelia asks, sounding confused.  

"Yeah," Clarice says, and suddenly feels a feather tickle the inside of her stomach.  "Susana told me she was spending the night with Amika.  Did she…did she leave already?"

Another few beats.  Clarice's heart takes a nasty lurch.  Ardelia's words are careful and cadenced, the voice of a calm woman speaking to an insane one.  

"Ahh…well, Clarice, she wasn't here."  

Clarice swallows.  "She isn't there now?  Was she there last night?"  A great big knife of fear stabs her stomach like a glass blade.  The real question leaps into her head unbidden:  _Did she lie to me?  What has she done?  _

"I'm sorry, Clarice…no, she wasn't.  She wasn't ever here."  

A great glob of fear stops her throat.    What has her sixteen-year-old planned?  For Christ's sake, this isn't like it was when Clarice is a kid:  teenage angst bullshit can get you _killed.  _Clarice knows.  She's seen the bodies of young girls who ran away over some petty reason or another and ran into the wrong predator.  

Her voice shakes.  Her fingers tighten on the plastic handset of the phone until her hand cramps.  "Ardelia, Susana told me she was staying over with you and Amika Thursday night.  Last time I saw her was yesterday morning, just before she left for school.   I…I thought she was with Amika, you know.   Can you…does Amika know…?"  

Ardelia's shuddering breath at least tells Clarice she is not alone, in either her realization or her fear.  "I'll see," she says resolutely.   Her voice turns away from the phone, but Clarice can still hear her.    

"_AmiKAAAH!", _and even Clarice shudders a bit.  Ardelia Mapp is one of the best and sweetest people she knows, but boy howdy when she yells, the earth shakes.  The running footsteps of Ardelia's daughter echo in the phone.  Then Clarice can hear her voice, surprised and shaken.  A conversation between mother and daughter occurs in quick, hushed breaths.    

"What?  Did I do something?"  

"No.  Did Susana say she was going to spend the night here?  You know where she is?"  

"No, Mom," Amika says calmly.  

"Here.  I need you to answer her questions," Ardelia says firmly, and hands the phone over.  

For a moment a bolt of sheer unrepentant jealousy bolts through Clarice.  Ardelia can talk with her daughter; Clarice has no idea where hers is.  Almost immediately her upper brain chokes it back down: that's hardly Ardelia's fault.  

The young girl picks up the phone.  Her voice is soft and spooked.  "Hello?  Miss Starkey?"  

"Hi, Amika," Clarice says tensely.  "I'm…I'm looking for Susana.  She told me she was going to spend last night with you.  Have you seen her?"  

Amika's answer is not what she wants to hear.  A thousand dark images all swirl in Clarice's mind at her words.  Tears rise to her eyes.  

"I'm sorry, Miss Starkey," Amika says.  "I haven't seen her.  She wasn't in school on Friday either."  


	3. Trackers

                Only a few scant hours ago, everything was fine.  It was just this morning that she stood in the sunshine, content and cautiously optimistic.  But that seems like years ago now.  Now, Clarice Starling's stomach is pricked with pieces of broken glass.  Now, everything has shattered into pieces.  Now, her daughter has disappeared.  

                The scene is a meeting room in the depths of Quantico.  No natural light pierces the room; natural light is not present in a room sixty feet below the surface of the earth.  Only a nasty fluorescent light overhead casts light down on a Formica table.  Clarice glances around her workplace and finds it sterile and artificial in a way she never has quite thought of before.  

                Clarice herself is quite natural.  A mother terrified that her offspring has followed her heart over her head and gone off to do something monumentally stupid.   Horrible images flick through her mind as they have flicked through the mind of a billion other mothers of a billion other teenagers over a million years, ever since teenagers wore the latest in bear skins and argued with their parents over who they were going mammoth hunting with.  

                Unfortunately for Clarice, a thousand different crime scenes remind her _ever _so helpfully of all the horrible things that can befall a teenager out on her own.  Particularly a female teenager.  She doesn't have to imagine what could happen to Susana; she sees that sort of thing every day.  

                Worse, for her, is a not completely welcome gift from her own background.  The Lutheran Home in Montana gave Clarice Starling food and shelter for most of her childhood.  They also gave her a strong moral framework to build on, insuring her strict adherence to their moral code.  From her tenth to eighteenth year in their care, there is a remaining dour Lutheran in the back of her mind, constantly reminding her what is right and what is night.  

                 Now she is lashed to that framework and hoist in her own petard.   The vestigial Lutheran who has guided her through these years is now shaking his head.  She envisions her Lutheran as an older man, balding, with clean-shaven jowls and a pristinely clean but understated suit – nothing too fancy.  She can hear the _tut-tut-tut _in her lower brain and cringes at the sound of it.  

                _Clarice Starling, **you **are partially responsible for this, _that dour, hard Lutheran reminds her.  _You should have told your daughter about this long ago.  If you had you probably wouldn't have been here today.  _

Clarice has agreed with that voice on many issues.  Do the crime, do the time.  Tell it to the judge.  She has been dismissive of the stories of those she has arrested as so much sob stories, and she has been derisive when those sob stories got crooks off the hook.    She, too, has been hard. 

 Normally, she has been as hard on herself as she has been on others.  She put herself through college, finishing first in her class.  She drove herself relentlessly, rarely permitting herself relaxation or luxuries.  

Even now, in her third life with her daughter, she has driven herself as she always has.  She has taken _some_ time to stop and smell the roses, but is that such a bad thing?  When the fleshy features of her Lutheran conscience point out her own misgivings, Clarice finds words that she has always privately mocked coming to her lips.  _No, wait.  I can explain.  Hear me out.  _

_I wanted to protect her, _she wants to protest.  _I did everything for her safety and well-being.  I couldn't let a serial killer raise her, could I?  She'd have become a monster just like him.  I wanted to tell her, and I was going to.  What if she'd told one of her friends, who told someone else, and then the next thing you know the **Tattler **would be on our doorstep.  I never once thought she would have her DNA scanned by the freaking evidence labs.  She wasn't ready. I was trying to protect her.  That's what mothers do.  _

It doesn't totally still the inner Lutheran.  No matter _what, _that dour gentleman points out, Susana has disappeared.   Clarice bears some responsibility for that no matter what.  Despite her defenses, Clarice _should _have told her daughter, _did not _tell her daughter, and is therefore suffering the consequences just as those who shirk their duties rightfully suffer the consequences.  

                And suffering she is, here in this meeting room in Behavioral Sciences with images of innocent teenagers flickering through the forefront of her mind and an unforgiving copy of the man she always thought of as Revrunt clucking his tongue in the back.  Her stomach is churning and roiling.  Everything feels like she is walking on shards of broken glass.  God, let Susana turn up safely.  She will find a way to make it right.  Making things right is what she does.  If she only gets the chance, she will.

                The door opens, and Lloyd Bowman, current Section Chief of the Investigative Support Unit, enters.  He looks calmly at her, his Asian features giving nothing away.  In his hands he has a manila folder.  She knows one thing that is in it: the police report that she filed this morning   A bored policewoman running to fat had taken it and reminded her in between snaps of gum that most of the time kids turned up on their own.  Lloyd, thank God, had been willing to make a few phone calls and see what he might be able to turn up.  

                And now, after only a few hours, he has something.  If fate has been particularly kind, Susana will be in a police station somewhere waiting for her.  If fate has been particularly cruel, Susana will be in a morgue somewhere, and it will be the morgue staff waiting for her to come identify her daughter.  The thought of that makes Clarice's heart pound and tears rise to her eyes.  

                Lloyd sits down and pulls up his chair slowly, taking his time.  Silence holds sway in the room.  Clarice's eyes are full of need and pain as she observes him.  His gaze shows some concern and sympathy.  All the same, he may be thinking the same thing as Clarice's inner Lutheran:  _You're here because you screwed up.  _

Her voice sounds weak and frightened to her.  "Do you…do you have anything?"  

                He nods.  "Yes," he says briskly.  

                An awful wave of fear wallops her.  "Is she…is she all right?"  

                Lloyd stops and purses his lips.  "We don't know," he says.  "She's not dead, though."  He leans back in the chair.  "Let me tell you what we were able to find, and we'll go from there."  

                Clarice nods bleakly.

                "Okay."  His voice sounds more businesslike.  Paper shuffles, the sound absurdly loud here in the underground room.  

                "In chronological order.  Your daughter has a car, twenty-year-old Honda with Virginia plates.  That's here on the Missing Persons report.  A cop saw her early Friday morning on New Hampshire Ave.  He stopped her and asked her why she wasn't in school.  She told him she was a foreign national looking to renew her passport.  He only remembered her because of her eyes.  Hadn't ever seen red eyes like that before.  He let her go, that was that."  

                Clarice swallows.  "But Susana's not a foreign national," she says blankly.  

                Bowman sighs and exhales slowly through his nostrils.  "Yes, she is," he says gently.  "The Argentine embassy is at 1600 New Hampshire.  That's where she was going.  Embassy staff was willing to cough up some facts.  She showed up at nine AM and filled out the paperwork for a new passport in the name of Susana Alvarez."  

                The mention of the alias that Susana had been born under makes Clarice shudder.  "Did they give her one?" she asks, knowing the answer already.  

                Bowman nods solemnly.  "She showed up with the right size pictures and a birth certificate showing she'd been born in Buenos Aires, and they had no reason to think there was anything weird about it," he adds.  

                A passport.  Clarice's stomach clenches.  _Please let her be using it for ID.  Just that.  Please, for Christ's sakes, was I **this **wrong?    _

Bowman's next words shatter that forlorn hope.  

                "Next she was seen was at Reagan International," he says.  "Her car is there in long-term parking.  I sent some forensics boys over to get it.  She took a ten AM flight to Toronto.  There's a copy of the tape coming over from the boys at TSA.  They flagged her because it looked sort of funny – Argentine national flying from the US to Canada.  Also, she had no luggage, and that raises eyebrows."  

                "Did they stop her?" Clarice asks hopefully.  Part of her hates this; she is reduced to simple sentences.  

                He shakes his head, his ebony hair gleaming in the overhead light.  "She told them she was studying in Canada," he says.  "She also acted embarrassed and said that she had a friend in Canada who had driven her stuff up there already and that was why she had no luggage.  Guy I talked to over at TSA felt real bad about it.  But again…at the time he had no reason to think it was anything different.  He figured if she had problems with Immigration Canada, that was Immigration Canada's ball of wax. She got on the plane and took off."  

                Ten AM.   She left at ten AM.  By the time Clarice had gone out for lunch, her daughter was in another country.  Another lurch rocked her stomach and she tasted sour acid in the back of her throat.  

                "Is she in Toronto now?" Clarice asks again, her eyes pained and needy.  

                Bowman shakes his head again in a gesture she has grown to hate.  

                "Her plane landed at Pearson at eleven-thirty," he says calmly.  Then he swallows.  "She never left the airport.  Took off on another flight at twelve-fifteen.  Good timing, if you ask me.  Pearson security boys said she had no luggage, too.  All the same, they let her go without too much problem."  

                Tears prick Clarice's eyes.  Some airport security.  Two countries just let her sixteen-year-old daughter waltz on through security checkpoints.  No one thought enough to stop her and ask any questions?  How could they _do _that?  

                "Where?"  Clarice's voice seems dead in the still air of the underground room.  

                Bowman sighs.  "Havana.  Cuba.  That's where the trail stops.  Cuban authorities are dicking me around.  They said it's none of the FBI's business if an Argentine girl travels to Cuba.  They won't help.  We know the plane landed in Havana in the afternoon, and we know she got off it because it came back for the evening flight.  "  

Clarice swallows.  For a long moment her throat is too dry to complete the transaction.  

                "They…won't help?" she asks in amazement.  "She is _my daughter.  _How could they piss and moan about Elian Gonzalez and not help return my daughter?"  

                Bowman shrugs.  "I sent a request to State.  We don't have diplomatic representation in Cuba, but there is a guy there who sees to US interests.  I'm doing everything I can, Clarice."  

                The urge to cry is strong, as is the urge to scream, punch the wall, or perhaps invade Cuba herself in an F-16.  Her daughter is 90 miles off the Florida coast, and they won't help?  

                "I know you are," Clarice says, her voice clogged by tears she refuses to shed.  "I know, Lloyd.  And I appreciate it more than you could ever know.  But for Christ's sake…she's just angry with me.  She's confused.   She's sixteen and she's gone off and done something half-cocked. You're telling me they won't help so that Fidel fucking Castro can thumb his nose at the US?  That…that _can't _be right."  

                Bowman shrugs.  "Well," he says, "we can try.  US Marshal's Service needs your okay to release the seal on her name change papers.  Once we do that, we can prove that Susana Starkey and Susana Alvarez are the same person.  It'll give us room to press the Cubans, but it's going to take some time."  

                "Do it," Clarice says strengthlessly.  What the hell is her daughter doing in Cuba?  The girl can't live without air conditioning and junk food; the socialist worker's paradise is _not _going to be to her liking.   She can't possibly be thinking of defecting, can she?  The idea seems impossible, but the idea that her daughter could've so easily skipped out of the country and put herself beyond her mother's reach would've seemed impossible early this morning.  It's elegantly simple.  Cuba is the one country in the hemisphere that will be likely to jerk the FBI around on every single little technical detail.  

                Bowman sighs and looks away, as of continuing is an awful chore he would rather not do.  

                "Clarice, let me ask you something," he says.  "Did Susana ever have phone calls that she didn't you around for?"  

                Clarice pauses.  Why is he asking?  Susana didn't have a boyfriend that she knew of.    And does he _have _to talk of Susana in the past tense?  

                "She likes talking on the phone," she hedges.  "She's sixteen, of course she does.  I didn't _monitor _her phone calls, though.  But nothing…nothing that didn't arouse my suspicion."  

                Bowman nods.  His questions flow quickly; the weapons of an investigator on the trail.  She knows the feeling.  

                "How about computers?  You have a PC at home?"  

                Clarice nods.  

                "Does she have her own or do you share one?"  

                Clarice stops.  It's weird to be the one asked the questions.  She's been used to asking them.  All the same, Lloyd is on the same side as she is.  

                "She has her own," Clarice confirms.  "Just a little one I bought a couple years ago for her."  

                "Was she online?"  

                Clarice nods again.  "We have DSL," she says confusedly.  

                "Bring the computer in.  If we're lucky she didn't format the drive.  If she did, I still want the tech boys to have a look at it.  I think we're going to find that she was talking with someone without you knowing.  Could be via phone, but it might be via instant-messaging programs too.  Something where she could have a conversation in relative privacy."  

                All she can do is nod and feel helpless and angry.  She knows what she wants: she wants her daughter back so she can explain.  But how to get there seems so very far.  

                "What makes you think that?" she asks, suddenly cross.  "I _did _supervise my daughter, you know.  I just…you don't raise a daughter in a miniature police state.  Why would she talk to someone without my knowing?  And how do you know those are related?"  

                "Does anything about this strike you as weird, Clarice?" Lloyd asks.  

                She puts a hand to her forehead and lets out a snort.  

                "Everything," she says.  "I know I screwed up.  I know I should've told her.  But for Christ's sakes, Lloyd, I was trying to protect her.  I just…I never thought she'd do this."  

                Bowman nods and reaches across the table to pat her shoulder comfortingly.  Clarice stiffens.  _All that weak girly crap, I always hated that.  _

"That's not what I mean," he says.  "I know you meant well.  I mean how she put this together.  A sixteen-year-old girl.  No visible source of income.  And she puts together an escape plan like this in _three days?  _Does that make sense to you?"  

                Clarice shudders.  It is hard to think of her daughter as planning flight like this, but it is possible for Susana to have financed her own escape.  Stolen credit cards, or even one of those perverts on the Internet, although _that _idea makes her knees jelly.  

                "She had help.  She had to have had help.  You can reserve tickets and such through the Internet, and these days you can do it from anywhere in the world with very little planning time.  But this plan was too slick for a sixteen-year-old to come up with it.  Using Cuba as a way to muddy the waters?  That's brilliant.  I'm not saying your daughter is dumb, but does she really know enough international politics to figure that one out?" 

                Clarice stops and thinks.  Susana is a bright kid, but she doesn't know if Susana could've come up with that.  But if she didn't, then who did?   

"I tried running down the tickets," he continues.  "They were bought through a travel agency in Toronto.  I didn't want to tell you until I'd told you everything else."  

                She shudders again.  Why?  Was it that bad?  Was it…?

                "Well?" Clarice asks, her voice cracking like dry leaves. 

                Lloyd Bowman lets out another sigh.  

                "Tickets were bought and paid for by some shell corporation.  Bought on Wednesday morning with a corporate credit card.  Established six months ago by some company that sets up companies for whatever you want, right over the Internet.    Bank accounts and home address of the company were in Baltimore.  We're running down what we can on it."

                  Clarice tenses.  In some way, she knows.  A long shadow of despair pierces her as Bowman continues.  Her inner Lutheran tells her it is fitting.  Lloyd's voice is calm, like a police officer delivering news of a loved one's death. 

                "The company that bought Susana's tickets," the Asian man says regretfully, "was named Raspail Ragout, Inc."        


	4. Ghost in the Machine

                The labs were where it all began, Clarice thinks.  This is where it was that Susana came on that damn field trip and just _had _to be the one to volunteer for the fucking DNA test.  The labs owed her for this.  Hopefully they would come through.  

                The beige case of her daughter's PC sits on a table, reminiscent of a patient on a gurney.  For a moment Clarice thinks of Donnie Barber's corpse on the steel table at the morgue.  She closes her eyes and swallows, forcing the vision away.  

                This past decade has been reasonably normal, as things go.  She has been as free of Dr. Lecter as she can be.  He has had no real place in her life.  She has tried not to think about him.  At least once a day, she has failed.  

                The technician looking over Susana's computer wears steel-rimmed spectacles and has an odd sense of humor.  When she brought it in, he turned it on and scowled at it.  It looked OK to Clarice at first glance.  

                "She FFR'ed it," the tech had explained.  

                "FFR?"  Clarice had been blank.  

                "Fdisk, format, and reload," he had explained.  "She blew away everything, formatted the drive, and reinstalled."  

                That doesn't sound good.  "So there's nothing?" she'd asked.  The tech had scowled at her as if she had insulted him.  

                "That's what they _want _you to think," he said.  "Though here, we've probably got the best data-recovery facility on the planet."  

                Then he had whipped out a Leatherman tool, applied it to the back of the computer case, and set about his work, a digital surgeon preparing a hard-drive-ectomy.  Deftly he removed the machine's hard drive and hooked it up to some other computer.  Clarice watched him fiddle and scowl .   Bright white light reflected off his glasses as he communed with the ghost in the machine.   His lips moved in a chant under his breath.  She had to lean in to catch it.  

                "You're so sly, but so am I."   

                _Clickety-clickety-clickety _go the keys.  The tech clicks back on one screen and then goes to another.  His lips skin back, exposing his teeth as if he could intimidate the machine that way.  

                "What sort of instant-messaging software did she use?" the tech asks.  

                Clarice blinks.  "Huh?"  

                "What sort of instant-messaging software?"  

                She has to think.  She'd seen it on her daughter's monitor countless times.  What was the name of it?  "Ummm…Trillian?"  

                The tech nods and turned back to the monitor.  Behind her, Bowman watches patiently.  He'd told her this guy was good, and she hoped he had not been just saying that to make her happy.  

                _Clickety-clickety-clickety.  _ "C'mon, c'mon," the tech grumbles.  _UNABLE TO RESTORE, _replied the computer.  Another program window opens up, and the tech's fingers race over the keyboard.  

                _REBUILDING FILE ALLOCATION TABLE – REBUILD SUCCESSFUL, _the computer announces.  

                The tech grins.  "Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen," he crows.  "Got it!"  

                "Told you he was good," Bowman rumbled behind her.  

                "Thanks, Gary," Clarice says to the tech, not sure where she pulled his name from.  

                "Bah.  Easy.  Elementary, my dear Watson.  She just ran the recovery disks and didn't even FDISK.  Course, there is one way to be _sure _all data has been removed from a hard drive."  

                Clarice leans in now, eager to see what clues the PC might have.  "What's that?" she asks anxiously.  

                The tech grins.  "Take it out, jump on it, cut it in pieces with a bandsaw, and run the pieces over with a truck," he comments.  "You'd be _surprised _what we can pull up with our lab tech juju."  He cackles  

                "Here we are," he says grandly.  "Let's see….Program Files…Trillian…logs…and ah-ha!  Look at these names and tell me if these are her friends.  We don't need to wade through four megs of girly talk."  He shudders delicately, as if girly talk will contaminate him somehow.    

                He indicates a list of file names.  Clarice cranes her neck to look at them.  _Amikaaaah.  _That would be 'Delia's daughter.   _La Morba.  _No, Clarice doesn't think that was it.  _SportBabe211.  _No.  _Hotguy90245.  _That wouldn't be Dr. Lecter, but she'll have to have a look at that one later.  

                _MarcusAurelius1938.  _She swallows, hearing Dr. Lecter's voice echo in her mind from many years ago.  

                _Read Marcus Aurelius.  The emperor counsels simplicity.  What is it that he does…this…man you seek?    _

"That one," she says, and feels her stomach churn.   

                _2/5/2020 19:52   MarcusAurelius1938:  Hello.  I saw your profile.  Are you an Argentine?  _

_                2/5/2020 19:52   SusanaVA:  Yes.  I was born there.  Are you?_

_                2/5/2020 19:52   MarcusAurelius1938:  Sì, soy argentino.  Vivo in Buenos Aires.  _

_              2/5/2020 19:53  SusanaVA: Yo vivìa en Buenos Aires hasta que tenìa cinco años.  _

_                2/5/2020 19:53 MarcusAurelius1938: Y despues?  _

_                2/5/2020 19:53 SusanaVA: Now I'm in the US.  Why? _

_              2/5/2020 19:53 MarcusAurelius1938:I was just curious.  I didn't mean to be too forward. _

Clarice's eyes close.  There were plenty of chat logs from then on, for a couple of months.  Most of them were simply small talk.  MarcusAurelius1938 would ask her how her day went, what was new with her, and exactly the sort of thing you would expect an internet friend to ask about.  The sort of thing that would have allayed any suspicions Susana might've had.  He didn't tell her he was her father; he was just an online friend who asked about her day.  

                For a moment she notices that both father and daughter punctuated correctly.  That is something Susana is odd about.  She's always done that.  Clarice did it as well; the school she attended at the Montana orphanage had been as picky about that as anything else.  She's always thought that had come from her.  Seeing Dr. Lecter's penchant for proper grammar and punctuation in this online environment bothers her: she didn't need to be reminded of his tie to Susana.

                _Very _clever.  Clarice has to give him that.  He didn't push anything; he passed himself off as simply a Buenos Aires native who liked chatting online.  Susana would've thought nothing of it.  

                Clarice knows better.  As she examines the logs, she sees how he carefully bided his time.  In the idle chitchat he was able to slowly both gain Susana's confidence and patiently chivvy away for whatever information he could get.  

                For a while he only talked to her about inconsequentialities.   He was slick, Clarice had to give him that.  He didn't press her; he let her open up to him little by little.  She told him she lived in Virginia with her mother._ Great, he knew where I live.  _At one point she had told him where she went to school, which would've given him a town name.  

                She finds herself thinking he had done some poking around on his own.  The snippets of information that Susana had unthinkingly given him would be enough to pop up quite a bit.  He'd managed to get her old home address with nary a problem, and she _still _wasn't sure how he had done that.  Dr. Lecter is exceptionally good at figuring stuff like that out. 

                The logs are mostly idle chitchat.   Combing it is like looking for grains of gold on a beach; there is a lot of worthless sand to comb through.  What Susana had done at school that day; pleasant greetings; and lots of babble.   Then, on April 7th, two days before the field trip: 

                _4/7/2020 20:12 MarcusAurelius1938:  So what sort of field trip is it that you're going on? _

_                4/7/2020 20:12 SusanaVA: It's just a field trip to the FBI. _

_                4/7/2020 20:12 MarcusAurelius1938: I suppose your mother has filled you in already on a lot of that. _

_                4/7/2020 20:13 SusanaVA:  Some of it.  There'll be all sorts of things we'll see: the crime labs and stuff like that. _

_                4/7/2020 20:13 MarcusAurelius1938: I've heard they have a large DNA database. _

_                4/7/2020 20:14 SusanaVA: They do.  _

_                4/7/2020 20:14 MarcusAurelius1938: Perhaps they'll scan your DNA.  One never knows.  It might be fun to try._

Air hissed from between Clarice's teeth upon reading that.  _He _had put the idea in her head?  Un-fucking-believable.  

                  Then, after that fateful day, there was another conversation.

                _4/10/2020 18:23  MarcusAurelius1938: Hello, Susana.  How are you?_

_                4/10/2020 18:23  SusanaVA: I'm all right…it's not a good time right now.  _

_                4/10/2020 18:23 MarcusAurelius1938: I'm sorry to hear that.  Is something wrong? _

_                4/10/2020 18:24 SusanaVA: Yes…I don't want to talk about it.  _

_                4/10/2020 18:25 MarcusAurelius1938: Learned something you didn't expect from the DNA scan, didn't you?_

                An image of Dr. Lecter arises in Clarice's mind.  He was sitting at a computer, just as she was now.  His pale face was painted by the monitor's glow.  On that face, a cold smile as he enjoyed the bombshell he had set off from five thousand miles away.  

                Clarice thinks of Dick Sutphen, whose essay on brainwashing she had read in college.  _Any study of brainwashing has to begin with a study of Christian revivalism in eighteenth century America. Apparently, Jonathan Edwards accidentally discovered the techniques during a religious crusade in 1735 in Northampton, Massachusetts. By inducing guilt and acute apprehension and by increasing the tension, the sinners attending his revival meetings would break down and completely submit. Technically, what Edwards was doing was creating conditions that wipe the brain slate clean so that the mind accepts new programming. He would tell those attending, "You're a sinner! You're destined for Hell!"_

Well, Dr. Lecter had sure induced apprehension and increased the tension on his daughter.  Had he wiped her brain slate clean and gotten her mind to accept new programming?  She sure as shit hopes not, but after all, her daughter had gotten up one day and flown to Cuba instead of going to school.  

                _4/10/2020 18:32 SusanaVA:  How did you know that?    _

_                4/10/2020 18:32 MarcusAurelius1938:  I know a great deal of things, Susana.  Tell me, have you ever had your left arm or hand X-rayed?  _

_                4/10/2020 18:34 SusanaVA:  Why?  _

_                4/10/2020 18:34 MarcusAurelius1938: Because almost assuredly the doctors would have commented on it.   There would have been extra bones in your hand.  You were born with an extra finger, you see; it was removed when you were eighteen months old.  _

_                4/10/2020 18:38 SusanaVA:  How did you know that?  How do you KNOW these things?  Who the hell are you?  _

_                4/10/2020 18:38 MarcusAurelius1938:  I knew about your hand because I was there when the work was done.  The best surgeon in Buenos Aires did it.  It was important to me that you not suffer the same scar I did; and so far as I know that goal was accomplished. Your scar should be virtually unnoticeable._

_                4/10/2020 18:44 SusanaVA:  you're creeping me out.   Have you been spying on me or something? _

_                4/10/2020 18:44 MarcusAurelius1938:  Spying on you?  Of course not.  I'm thousands of miles away.  _

_                4/10/2020 18:48 SusanaVA: Then how can you know all this stuff about me?  _

_                4/10/2020 18:48 MarcusAurelius1938:  I should thought you would have realized it by now.  _

_                4/10/2020 18:52 SusanaVA:  Are you my father?  _

                4/10/2020 18:52 MarcusAurelius1938:  You're much like your mother; you have this odd tendency to miss what's right in front of you sometimes.  Yes, Susana, I am your father.  And now that you've done the DNA scan, you know who I am.  

_                4/10/2020 18:58 MarcusAurelius1938:  I take it you're too stunned to believe this is true, but I assure you it is.  _

_                4/10/2020 19:03 SusanaVA:  I don't know what to say…_

_4/10/2020 19:04 MarcusAurelius1938:  Most of what you may have heard of me is third-hand, and I assure you there is more.  It's fairly obvious that your mother has not told you everything.  Come see for yourself, why don't you?  _

_4/10/2020 19:04 SusanaVA:  How could I see you?  You're on the Ten Most-Wanted List.  I saw on the FBI's web site.  _

_4/10/2020 19:05 MarcusAurelius1938:  Rather dull, isn't it?  It's true that travel to Virginia is not a wise decision for me.  But there is much that we can do. If you are interested, then perhaps we can arrange things further.  I shall contact you by alternate means shortly. _

_4/10/2020 19:07 SusanaVA:  Well, I'm interested, sure.  But how will you do this?  _

_4/10/2020 19:08 MarcusAurelius:  Trust me; I know exactly how to do it.    _

That is it for the logs. Clarice Starling pushes her chair back.  This is worse than simply running away; Dr. Lecter has convinced her daughter to flee to him.  Now, either she is in Cuba or she is…God only knows where.  

"Okay," she says, and looks at Bowman.  "Now what?"  

Bowman shrugs.  "We're working on the Cubans.  Standard Cuban immigration law means that tourists have to have three days paid for in a hotel.  I'll talk to some guys I know at State.  If God loves us, they're enjoying their time in Cuba."  

Diplomatic pressure; the careful steps and tempo of the political dance.  The Cubans don't hate the US enough to let Hannibal Lecter slip through their fingers, do they?  At the least, maybe they will lock him up and demand candy for his return.  They _have _returned other criminals before.  

But there is a part of Clarice that says that governments and men in gray suits talking on the phone will not settle this matter.  Dr. Lecter has learned to paralyze those systems; law enforcement agencies and governments have offered him not the slightest impediment in all these years of illicit freedom. 

No.  This will be settled on a smaller scale.  The governments of the world are great for pageantry, and occasionally they _can _do some good, but not in this matter.  This matter will be settled between mother, daughter…and father. 


	5. Sides of Conversation

                Time for a woman in pain can stretch out to eternity, and so it is for Clarice Starling now.  Yesterday seemed to last forever.  'Delia came over and stayed with her for a while.  But eventually she had to go.  Back to her own family.  Her own daughter.  It had been hard not to be jealous; Ardelia was concerned and determined to support her.  

                "Clarice, it'll be okay," Ardelia had said.  "We'll find her.  She'll come around.  Once she realizes what he is, she'll want to get away.  What we need to do for right now is just get the word out. Through the embassies and stuff like that.  TV ads and radio and such.  Tell her to just go to any American consulate, or police station, or whatever, and to _come home."  _

                Clarice had been bitterly comforted.  That was Ardelia.  She'd made the Law Review at the University of Maryland while working at night.  Take control of the entire South American media system just to get her teenage daughter to come home?  No problem.

                Then she left, and Clarice was alone.  The house was eerily quiet.  She kept thinking Susana would be coming out of her room or at the door or something.  But there was no sound in the house unless she made it.  She was all alone.  For a moment she found herself thinking of Chilton, how she had seen his quiet little lonesome life.  At the time she'd thought it made him somehow lesser than her.  

                How had this happened?  Could this be set right?  All she needed was the chance.  Five minutes to explain to her daughter what she had done: that was all she wanted.  _I didn't tell you, but that was to protect you.  I was trying to keep you safe.  _But there was a yawing gulf between that and where she was, and Clarice had the sinking feeling that the chasm might be insurmountable.  

                Now, Clarice Starling sits in her living room, staring around the room and wondering how the hell this could have happened.  On her mantelpiece are a few pictures of Susana.  Now they seem to mock her; the girl in the pictures is thousands of miles away.  

                _Don't let this happen to me, _she beseeches.  _She has to turn up.  She has to.  I can explain this, really.  Don't let my daughter fall under a monster's spell.  _

A great deal of her fear comes from her knowledge of Dr. Lecter.  He can stay hidden; he's done it for a few decades now, for Christ's sake.  He doesn't appear to care if the authorities know that he was involved in Susana's flight; the name of the shell company he used tells them that.   He _wanted _her to know.  He knows perfectly well the way her guts are knotting, as if a giant fishhook had caught in her intestines.  In some sick way, he probably _enjoys _it.

                And now that he has her…the thought makes Clarice shiver.  He won't abuse her physically.  She _is _his daughter, after all.  Hannibal Lecter has no family.  But she knows what he can do to Susana's mind.  She knows this firsthand.  His voice echoes in her mind in thoughts she has forced herself to block.  _Clarice, I would like you to focus on this, _a small shiny object held out for her to focus on.  

                If Susana is in his clutches, then Ardelia's idea won't work.  Dr. Lecter is skilled in his knowledge of how to mold the human mind.  In fact, Clarice thinks, he is probably one of the world's foremost authorities on brainwashing.   Susana may _hear _the calls of her mother to come home, but she won't comply.  Dr. Lecter has what it takes to alter the way she thinks.

                This thought brings up a bitter memory she still has problems with.  Dr. Lecter is good at that.  Good enough, in fact, that he cracked her like the proverbial egg and kept her as his trophy wife for eleven years.  Susana may have foolishly gone to him under her own free will, but if Clarice does not find her soon, she won't have the free will to leave.  It'll _look _like she does, but Clarice knows better.  

                The damnable thing is that Clarice does not know what to do next.  By the time the Cuban government quits screwing around with them, she knows they will not be in Cuba anymore.  At most, they would have spent the night in Cuba and flown out in the morning.  The cool, fact-driven profiler tells her this; the anguished mother hopes against hope.  

                An electronic _boop _interrupts her anguish and she glances around.  Susana's computer, back from the FBI's labs, is set up on the desk it formerly resided in, the monitor staring at her like a great glass eye.  She doesn't remember having set it back up again. But it is all back up and running again, plugged into the house's network and content to shuttle packets back and forth to its silicon heart's content.  

                On the screen is a small, single window.  It flashes as if desperately trying to gain her interest.  She looks up at it and her mood changes from sadness to angered excitement.  

                _MarcusAurelius1938:  Are you there, Clarice?  _

Clarice's heart begins to pound.  She crosses the room to the desk.  For a moment anger swells in her.  She sits down at the desk and stares bitterly at the window, wishing she could teleport herself as easily as the words, teleport herself through to him and throttle him until his eyeballs pop out for the pain he has caused her.  

                Instead, she simply types _Yes.  Is this Susana?_

Several moments pass.  The window informs her helpfully that _MarcusAurelius1938 is typing… _

_                MarcusAurelius1938:  No, it is not.  She's here with me, though.  I assure you that she is in good health and being well taken care of.  I shall not continue this conversation here.  There is a Mobil gas station seven miles from your home, right near the entrance to the highway.  Go there; the pay phone on the side of the building will be ringing.  You have ten minutes; after that I will assume you are not interested in discussing this matter further.  _

_                MarcusAurelius1938 signed off at 21:32:12 PM.  _The computer makes a sound like a door closing to underscore the point.  Clarice stands and her lips skin back, displaying her teeth.  The urge to fight, part of her warrior's training, rises strong.  

                Bowman had told her that he would arrange with the phone company to have a standing trap-and-trace on her home phone line, just in case Dr. Lecter tried just this.  Did it count for the DSL line?  Would her ISP or the instant-messaging company or _anybody _be able to track it?  

                Of course they would, and of course Dr. Lecter would know that and plan for it.  He is older, but he learned to use computers well enough to booby trap his own when the Italian police found it.  Susana might be able to fill him in a bit on that; she knows how to use computers about as well as Clarice did.  

                And of course, she doesn't have time to mull this over right now.  If Dr. Lecter said she had ten minutes to travel seven miles, he meant it.  She grabs her keys and her purse and runs outside.   Her Mustang had long since been replaced, but by a newer model bought through a DEA auction, just as its predecessor had been.   Clarice likes performance in her cars. 

                The large engine growls to life, and Clarice throws it in reverse.  The Mustang booms out of her nice little townhouse in a nice little suburban condo development and rockets along the nice private roadway with zero concern for what the neighbors would think.  The neighbors don't have a daughter kidnapped by a highly intelligent sociopath; she does. 

                She gains the main road and turns onto it.  The Mustang's tires shriek.  Too bad she doesn't have a red light in the car.  If a cop stops her, she'll keep driving anyway.  They can arrest her later.  For now this is her one chance.  

                There are a few small favors that break her way.  There is only one light between her and the station and it is green.  It isn't raining.  The car handles well, even if it is a bit overpowered.  Clarice likes the power just fine.  The steering wheel trembles just a bit, just enough so that she can feel it when she grips the wheel.  

                Given her mission it is little comfort.  It is seemingly an eternity before the Mobil sign gleams overhead, a winged red horse on a background of white and blue.  It gleams down at Clarice in a somehow sterile manner.  The 24-hour mini-mart is of no interest to her; the phone on the wall is.  The Mustang screeches to a stop.  Clarice throws herself out the door.  Her work shoes rattle-thud on the asphalt as she runs towards the phone, which is already ringing.  A stitch begins to build in her side as she crosses the few remaining feet. 

                She grabs the phone and puts it to her ear.  Her heart pounds.  Her breath wheezes in her lungs.  Her life in Behavioral Sciences has deprived her of the opportunity to be as physically active as she was before.  Besides, she is now in her fifties; try as she might, she cannot match what she was twenty years ago.  

                "Hello?"  Her own voice is pained and gasping.  She hopes to hear her daughter's voice in return.  Just five minutes to talk some sense into Susana.  It occurs to her sourly that it may well be too late.  She chokes that voice off, determined to try.  

                "Hello, Clarice."  The voice is assuredly not Susana's.  Clarice scowls and feels a chill run down her spine.  

                "Let me talk to her," she hisses.  It is hard to choke off the words _you son of a bitch, _which desperately want to follow, molding her tongue into their shapes.  

                "You needn't sound so angry, Clarice.  Susana is fine.  I was hoping to chat.  It's been a while."  Dr. Lecter's metallic, cultured voice sounds amused.  For a moment Clarice clenches the receiver until her fingers ache and hawks back to Senator Martin.  _And then he just drank down my pain…_as he is now drinking hers down, deeply enjoying the maternal distress he has caused.  

                "Give me my daughter," Clarice utters between clenched teeth.  

                "You make it sound like she's an object to be handed off from person to person," Dr. Lecter observes.  "Have you ever given a thought to what Susana wants?"  

                Clarice scowls again.  "She's only sixteen years old," she says.  "Just…show some decency."  As soon as it is out of her mouth, she knows it is the wrong thing to say.  Still, she has no cards to play.  He has her daughter and she doesn't.  

                "Decency?  _Please, _Clarice.   Susana may make her own choices, you know.  They may not match what you want for her, but they _are _her choices to make."  

                Clarice halts.   So that _is _his game after all.  Brainwash her and then claim it's her free choice to…to what?  Flee with him?  Who the hell does Dr. Lecter feel the need to justify himself to, anyway?  

                No, this is a sadistic game.  She chokes back a sob.  If he hears it he will drag it out, just to cause her more pain.  

                "I want to talk to my daughter," she says resolutely, trying not to let despair creep into her tone.  "Is she there?  May I speak with her, please?"  Courtesy may get her what she wants.   Sometimes it does, with Dr. Lecter.  

                "You're still courteous," Dr. Lecter says as if reading her thoughts.  "Exaggerating your courtesy to the point of burlesque, but courtesy nonetheless.  One moment, please."  

                Clarice turns and stares at the road running south as if she can actually see Susana from here.  Her own breath sounds heavy in her ear.  A moment later, she hears the phone being handed off.   Then, her daughter's voice in her ear, simultaneously a great relief and a stabbing pain.  

                "Hi, Mom," Susana says cautiously.  

                Clarice's heart pounds and her brain kicks into overdrive, trying to scan her daughter's words.  She doesn't sound drugged or unreasonably calm.  She sounds like a girl who has done something that will make her mother extremely frightened and pissed off.  That's pretty close to the truth; enough to satisfy Clarice.  

                A plethora of emotions pour through Clarice as she stands at the phone here at this gas station.  Fear.  Fear for what her daughter has done, fear of never seeing her again, fear of Dr. Lecter molding her mind like modeling clay until it has become what Dr. Lecter wants it to be.  Anger.  Anger at her daughter for having run away in the first place, for hiding her conversations with Dr. Lecter from Clarice.  Even empathy; just as Clarice had yearned for her father after his death, Susana has too.  

                She cannot scream at her daughter now, no matter how her stomach churns.  Her hand tightens down on the phone until the handset creaks warningly.  For a moment all that escapes her now is a sobbing sigh.  

                "Susana?" she asks.  It is only a pained whisper, and she knows he is listening – somehow – and that he will batten on it.  But she has to _try.  _

"Mom, I know you didn't want me to," Susana says.  "But it's okay.  I'm fine.  I just…I _had _to.  I mean, he's my father."  

                A pang strikes Clarice.  Fear? Anger?  Concern?  She can't tell; perhaps it is all three.  

                "Honey," she says in a powerless tone.  "Look.  I'm not mad.  I'm…I'm worried.  Your--," she stops, unable to say the words.  _Your father.  _"Dr. Lecter is _not _what you think he is.  You're in danger, Susana.  Now look.  For now, I want you to go to the nearest American embassy, or a police station or something, and turn yourself in.  They won't arrest you, honey, you won't have to go to jail, just _please,--_," 

                Susana interrupts her with an annoyed tone she knows all too well.  "I didn't come all this way just to come on a plane and come right back," she says tartly.  

                _If you don't come back now, you never will.  _"Honey," Clarice says, her tone openly pleading now, "please, just listen to me.  I love you.  I…I'm afraid for you.."  

                "He's my father," Susana retorts.  "He won't hurt me."  

                _No, he'll just…mold you into what he wants you to be.  _"Susana, please, sweetheart, I swear I'm not mad, just _come home."  _

"I will.  Soon.  Just not yet."  Susana's voice is both sympathetic and recalcitrant.    

                Tears prick Clarice's eyes.  "Susana, it's _got _to be now, you've got to believe me, he is _not _safe--,"  

                A click, a rattle, and Dr. Lecter's voice replaces her daughter's, filling her with helpless rage.  She wants her daughter, the lamb of her very own.  

                "I'm sorry to have to cut this short, Clarice, but we must be going," he says, his voice cool and amused.  "I assure you I'll keep her out of trouble."  

                Then a _click, _and the smooth low moan of the dial tone.  Clarice Starling bashes the pay phone with its own handset in frustration.  Then she puts her head in her hands and begins to sob under the harsh light of the arc-sodium lights overhead. 

                Five thousand miles away, Dr. Lecter hangs up the phone and looks around the grandeur of the Retiro train station.  His daughter eyes him with some displeasure.  He tilts his head as he watches her in return.  She is so like Clarice through the face.  But those are his eyes, duplicated by busy genetic messengers, unchanged and constant.  

                "You didn't have to hang up on her like that," Susana says, sounding irked.  

                "Yes, I did.  Tracing technology improves every day."  He waves a hand in a smooth gesture.  "Our train will be arriving soon.  Let us go."  

                Next to them are a few suitcases on a handcart.  Susana takes the handles of the cart and begins to push it; she is sixteen and full of strength.  Dr. Lecter is eighty-two, and while he is still in far better shape than most men his age, he is not as strong as he was as a younger man.  

                For his own pleasure, he reviews having met Susana in Cuba.  The drollery of that still pleases him.  Here in South America, Dr. Lecter has many identities.  One of his identities was a member in good standing of the local Communist party.  It was that identity that he used to travel to Cuba.  Based on that, Dr. Lecter thought it likely that the Cuban government would be loath to assist American authorities, and he had been correct.  

                Ideology means nothing to Dr. Hannibal Lecter, but using it to accomplish his aims pleases him immeasurably.  

                 They had gone shopping upon their arrival in Buenos Aires.   Susana had come literally with the clothes on her back.  There was plenty of European couture in Buenos Aires, for those who could afford it.  He could.  He had been somewhat surprised when she turned up her nose at several dresses that he had found attractive, but perhaps her mother had rubbed off on her.  They had compromised.  

                It bothered Dr. Lecter not at all that the FBI might eventually connect the maroon-eyed girl and her maroon-eyed father who had bought several thousand pesos worth of clothing in the best shops that Buenos Aires had to offer.  In fact, he was counting on it.  He'd made a point of displaying his scarred hand to more than one clerk while paying for his daughter's clothing.  

                 "I wanted to see more of Buenos Aires," Susana says wistfully.  "I mean, this is where I was _born."  _The rubber wheels of the luggage cart squeak as she pushes it along.  _How sentimental, _Dr. Lecter thinks, but he is happy to have her here.    He had lost Mischa; he had lost Clarice; he had lost Susana.  She was the only one of the three to ever come back to him.  He does not want her to leave a second time.

                "Another time, you will," Dr. Lecter says easily.  "It's not safe for me here.  We cannot stay long in Argentina."  

                Susana nods.  It is not far to the track where their train is boarding.  A man in uniform offers to take the bags.  Watching his daughter transfer them to the man's cart tells him that she has inherited his strength, among other things.  

                The man takes the bags and politely helps them onto the train when it arrives a few minutes later.  He directs them forward, to the sleeper compartment Dr. Lecter has reserved.  He chatters in rapid-fire _castellano _at them, wishing them a good day.  Susana smiles and thanks him in her somewhat fractured command of the language.

                "Do you remember your Spanish?" he asks curiously.  

                "Some," Susana confirms.  "I haven't spoken it since I was five, so I guess it's got to come back to me."  

                "It will," Dr. Lecter confirms, and opens the door.  The suite is impressive, for train travel.  There are two bedrooms, a small sitting room, and a bathroom.  Susana's eyes widen.  Dr. Lecter supposes she is unfamiliar with trains.  

                "This is ritzy," Susana says, and looks around the berth.  It is small, admittedly, but it will allow them to travel in comfort.  The bedrooms are tiny, but they are enough for now.  It is not that long of a trip.                  "I prefer to travel in comfort," Dr. Lecter explains.  "Besides, the trains are very safe.  I have identity papers for you, but we shouldn't need them until we arrive."  

                "Where _are _we going?" Susana asks.  "You didn't tell me where you lived."  She swallows.  "You didn't tell me much," she adds wistfully.  

                "Asunciòn," Dr. Lecter says.  "In Paraguay.  There are not many tourists there.  It's quiet and relatively safe.  There's enough nightlife that I suspect you'll be able to find things to do."  He smiles, as if acknowledging the gulf of years between himself and his daughter.  

                The train begins to pull out of the station, and Susana watches the window curiously, fascinated by the difference.  He supposes her experience with trains – if indeed there is any – consists mostly of the commuter lines radiating out of Washington.  Soulless things they would be; clean and not much more, a simple seat for someone to ride in going to work.  Dr. Lecter rather likes the expensive sleeper accommodations he has reserved.  

                He observes his daughter for his own amusement.  The shape of her face is definitely Clarice's.  At sixteen she reminds him of the young FBI agent – perhaps only six or seven years older – who braved Chilton and Miggs to come to his basement cell.  She puts a hand on the window, and Dr. Lecter's mind skips back decade to remember Mischa's small hands, like fleshy stars.  Although Susana is eight times older than Mischa had ever been, there is still something of her aunt in her.  Or perhaps it merely exists in his perception.  When she had been two, there were times he found himself wondering if _this _was  'making a place' for Mischa had been.  There had been times he had stared over the bars of her crib, wondering who was really under the blanket.  Every time he had pulled it back from her face, it had been Susana, but he had still checked.  

                Then when she had turned five, he had suffered the double blow of losing Clarice and Susana at the same time.  Clarice had awakened and taken Susana with her.  She had fled north, back to America.    He could not follow them there.    Walking into Washington, DC would be foolish, and Dr. Lecter is no fool.  He had been patient, though, and years of careful waiting have brought him to where he is today.  His daughter is with him again.  At long last, someone who has left him has come back to him.

                Watching her, he is sure of one thing:  he will not let her leave.  She seems pleased to be with him, and Dr. Lecter is relatively confident that she will remain so.  If Clarice comes down after her…he will be ready.  


	6. Spoil the Child

  


Clarice Starling sits at her desk, buried deep within the modern crypt of the Investigative Support Unit. The fluorescent lights overhead are relentless. Her PC awaits her command. This room is much as it was before her daughter fled. There is a picture of Susana on her desk. A few days ago, it was a simple pleasant reminder of her daughter. Now it is a symbol that it was not before: the symbol of what Clarice must do. 

Dr. Lecter's file is up on her screen, and her old notes spill across the white glow of the monitor. Her requests for sales reports from East Coast Jaguar dealerships, her notes on Dr. Lecter's preferences in food and china and art. All of it is there. 

There is _something _in this file that she knows will help her. Even though it is two decades old, this is still the single best source of information on Hannibal Lecter. Some of the notes from her hypnotic recall sessions are here, too. Yet Clarice finds herself thinking that the key to finding her daughter lies in the old, not the new. 

It has been three days since Susana disappeared. In that time, Clarice has forced herself to stop grieving and start working. The loss of her daughter cuts her deeply, but all the tears in the world will not bring her daughter back. Only action will do that. 

Clarice knows that her co-workers in the FBI will do everything they can. Still, it is not the same. They want to find Susana; she _needs _to. It is with grim steeliness that she sets about her task. 

When Clarice Starling was a young trainee in the Academy, Jack Crawford gave her many things: opportunities, a few accolades, and the desire to please him. Also twenty pounds of bullshit in a ten-pound bag, to be totally blunt about it. But he did give her one piece of advice that resonates now, years later, even after Jack Crawford has been rendered dry bones next to his Bella. 

_Freeze it. Freeze the business with Chilton. We'll kick his ass up between his shoulderblades when we get the chance. Keep your eyes on the prize for right now. _

__It had been useful then and it is useful now. She will freeze all her terror and grief over her daughter's foolishness. Freeze it and work on doing what she has done better than anyone else: track Hannibal Lecter. The prize then was Catherine Baker Martin safe and sound. The prize now will be her daughter, equally so. 

Her original idea of tracking Dr. Lecter by his tastes has been expanded on, computerized, automated. Eleven years of searching have turned up nothing. Of course, Dr. Lecter probably knows of her original research and has changed his methods to compensate for their search parameters. 

Even so, she thinks there is merit in the idea. 

_Wait a minute, _she thinks. _It isn't **your **tastes I should be looking for, is it? Because you're not going to be buying for yourself. You're going to be buying **her **things, things that she wants. First of all because you always loved spoiling her. Second of all because you want her to think you're just a fuzzy old bunny_.

There are those who would argue with her, saying that Dr. Lecter wouldn't spoil his daughter because it would be rude and gauche. Clarice knows they are wrong; she was _there. _He spoiled Susana with guileless glee, giving the little girl everything she wanted. It had taken some adjustment when she'd gotten Susana back to the States. Now he will spoil her with a vengeance. 

What does Susana like? That question she knows. Rock music, for one. She cannot hope to track sales of CD's across a city, let alone a continent. But she'll have to see if any of the groups that Susana likes are on tour in South America. Front row, probably. Clarice does not think he will accompany her to a rock concert; he'd hate it too much. What else? She's never been into jewelry or other stuff like that: she wears earrings and that's about it. 

Music is a possibility; Susana played piano and Clarice had wanted her to stick with it. Dr. Lecter had owned a piano back in Buenos Aires. A harpsichord, too. That may be something. She jots that down: _first-rate pianos. _

She might want a cell phone; she'd bugged Clarice about wanting one until finally Clarice had broken down and bought her one of the prepaid ones, telling her she'd have to buy the cards herself. Dr. Lecter might well be canny enough to deny that request, knowing that a cell phone these days makes an incredibly convenient tracking device. 

A computer and Internet access; that was another. Tracking one person across the entire Internet would be damn near impossible, but she was pretty sure Susana would want it. She'd have to contact Susana's friends, particularly Amika. If she did, and they got the right tracking software on Amika's computer – or better yet, spoofed her from here – that would be a huge help. 

She is on the right track; she knows it. Dr. Lecter may be clever, but his taste was his weak point before, and his urge to spoil may be one now. With a hunter's grin, Clarice leans forward and begins making a list, seeking to hunt her own daughter by her tastes. This time, her confidence is justified.

...

Dr. Lecter's mansion in Asunción is directly on the water of the Río Paraguay, and he has grown fond of it. In his years in Buenos Aires, Dr. Lecter had always liked the water. The family had purchased a waterfront home in Mar del Plata, and some of Dr. Lecter's fondest memories of fatherhood were of Susana playing on their stretch of private beach along the South Atlantic. On the grounds of his current home are also a few trees he has deliberately planted where he can see them from the windows. Years ago, he once told Clarice Starling that he wanted to see a tree, or even water. Since he has been free, he has made it a point to have both. 

The mansion has windows running the length of the house. Dr. Lecter does not like to be in a room that he cannot see out of. Even now, with his freedom measured in decades, the indignity of incarceration has left its mark. 

Paraguay is an empty quarter of South America, a country little known even to its neighbors. The country still bears marks from its time as the most durable police state in South America, just as Dr. Lecter still bears some marks from his incarceration. 

And now, an antique black Jaguar glides smoothly up the driveway and halts. The door opens and Dr. Hannibal Lecter steps from the passenger side of the automobile. He has allowed his daughter to drive. That has caused him some slight displeasure; even at eighty-two, Dr. Lecter prefers the control of driving himself. Still, she enjoyed driving the Jaguar, and it was well worth it. Her driving was not _that _bad. 

She alights from the car, her head moving up, up, up, as she stares at the house. Dr. Lecter is unreasonably pleased. If she is impressed, it will be easier to convince her to stay with him. He is fairly confident of his ability to accomplish _that _goal. 

"Wow," she says. "You live here?" 

Dr. Lecter nods. "I do," he confirms. "Along with my servants." His eyes twinkle. "It is here that I have made my sanctuary," he says, carefully modulating his tone to lend it the proper touch of angst. "Here I hoped for years that your mother would come to her senses and come home to me." 

Susana's lips purse. Dr. Lecter supposes that she has always wondered about him. Perhaps now she resents her mother's decision to flee. That would not be a bad thing for his purposes. For now, he must observe her personality and map out her mind. To obtain a basic understanding of her will not be difficult; his curiosity remains as strong now as it ever was. 

He will give her a day or so in the house, to re-accustom herself to the pleasures of having servants whose morale is high and will thus actively work to fulfill her every whim. Then shopping in Asunciòn; electronics, stereo equipment, and the other things a teenager might want. Part of him shudders to think of what her musical tastes will be, but she can be taught, he supposes.

His time is short: eventually, she will ask about returning to her life in Virginia. Dr. Lecter cannot and will not let that happen. Clarice may suffer, but Clarice saw fit to deprive him of wife and daughter for eleven years. Turnabout is fair play, as it were. It is likely that she will buck the idea of staying here, but Dr. Lecter is prepared for that contingency. After all, he has convinced an unrepentant child molester to cut off his own face and feed it to dogs, he suggested to a madman that he swallow his tongue...and he had, long ago, convinced Clarice Starling to abandon her quest and stay with him. 

Dr. Lecter closes his eyes like a lizard for a moment and thinks of Mischa, this girl's aunt. Although almost eight decades have passed since Mischa last walked the earth, the memory is crystal clear and brilliant. If she, by some happenstance, believed it was her duty to follow the deserters out from the barn, would he have let her? 

Of course not. 

He is eighty-two and far from naïve. Confronting his own mortality is not something that frightens him, but to pretend that decades more await him is foolish. He is not afraid to die here in Asunciòn, but he does not want to die alone. 

Mischa to Clarice to Susana; the links are there. Mischa had been taken from him never to return; Clarice had taken herself and Susana away from him. It had taken him years to accept that he would never be able to retrieve Mischa. Now, however, things are different. 

Susana is here and must remain here. In the event that she demands to leave, he has an extensive repertoire of tools to change that perception: spoiling her is only one arrow in his quiver, and he has many others. What of Clarice? Obviously she knows that Susana is on this continent now; she will find out that he and Susana were in Buenos Aires shortly, if she hasn't already. That was as he had intended. 

Will she realize it is a red herring? Probably. Will she follow his trail to Paraguay? Of that he is not so sure. He was not so foolish as to take a direct train from Buenos Aires to here. His route back to his home was far more circuitous, criss-crossing countries and switching identities. Yet he has been reminded – both pleasantly and unpleasantly – that Clarice Starling can surprise him. Even so, the old monster has a trick or two up his sleeve, should she pay him a visit.

But for now, he is safe, and he can re-acquaint himself with his daughter here. He smiles pleasantly at his daughter and gestures at his front door. The butler – just as well-trained and just as polite and deferent as his servants in Buenos Aires – opens the door and bids them welcome. 

"Dinner is prepared, señor," the butler says politely. He nods at Susana in polite greeting. "_Bienvenidos, __señorita." _

__"Thank you," Dr. Lecter says calmly, and smiles. "Allow me to show you your room, Susana. We will furnish it shortly, to your liking." 

She seems surprised, but does not protest. Good. Eventually, of course, it will be necessary to disabuse her of the notion that she will be returning to the US, but that can wait. For now, a pleasant dinner with his daughter in his own home is something he has waited eleven years for, and now he will have it. 

Dinner is excellent; he expects no less. He paternally ignores the fact that she wears jeans to the the dinner table. She can be taught about proper dress later. He can be patient; there is _plenty _of time. 


	7. In Dreams

  


Clarice Starling finds herself somewhere she never expected to be again. Down in the dark where you give it or you don't. At first, everything is dark and she does not understand. She can see nothing at all, an open-air blindfold. But she can smell the mustiness and she can hear the screams, and suddenly she knows where she is. After all these years, she is back in Buffalo Bill's basement, playing his desperate, deadly game. 

She can hear the scrape of his shoes, but can see nothing. The little .38 they gave her is held out before her, her eyes wide, her pulse pounding. Catherine's screams echo in her ears, throwing her off and making it hard to track the bastard. 

All the same, she is the Clarice Starling of old, young and strong and deadly serious. He may shoot her but she will die fighting every step of the way. In the velvety darkness, she hears him cock his revolver behind her _snick snick, _and she wheels, arms and head and body all turning like a turret, finger tightening on the trigger _(smoothly, dammit, Starling, _Brigham reminds her, _don't pull that trigger, **squeeze **it,)_, and then there are two muzzle flashes a few feet in front of her, blindingly bright in the darkness. Cordite hits her nostrils and her ears ring from the reports. Glass shatters and sunlight pours in, and just as she did before she flinches. The gun is still out, but she shields her eyes with a bicep like a movie vampire struck by sunlight. 

She looks over her outstretched arms, expecting to see the dying form of Jame Gumb before her, the stalks of his night-vision goggles making him resemble the insects he sought to emulate. But he is not there. In front of her there is simply nothing. 

She runs and glances down into the pit, and in the faint light that penetrates its depths, eyes reflect redly up at her, as if the pit contains a demon. She stares down into it and shakes her head, puzzled. 

There is a winch hooked up nearby, and Clarice lowers it into the pit, one hand on the winch's release handle and the other firmly on her gun. Her ears strain for the sound of her opponent, but there is nothing. 

"I got it," comes a voice from the pit, and Clarice begins to crank it up. It goes easily, far more easily than she remembers. In short order, a hand places itself on the top of the pit and the figure inside scrambles out. Clarice blinks her eyes. 

It is not Catherine Baker Martin in the pit, but Susana. She wears the same ragged jumpsuit and looks bedraggled the same way Catherine did, but it is her daughter. Clarice stares blankly at her, not understanding. Buffalo Bill had most of a foot and probably sixty pounds on Susana; the girl is small-framed and petite the way Clarice is. 

_What the hell was he gonna make out of her, a sock? _Clarice thinks incredulously. 

"Are you all right?" she asks. Susana tilts her head and stares at her bloodlessly. Then she shakes her head. 

"Are you hurt? Where?" Clarice asks, searching her for visible signs of injury. None are present, just as there were none before. "Did he hurt you?" she repeats. 

"He didn't put me in the pit," Susana answers enigmatically. "You did." 

Incomprehension fills her. What is Susana talking about? "What?" she asks dazedly. 

"He didn't put me in the pit," Susana repeats, and looks at her with no gratitude. "_You _did." 

Clarice swallows nervously. Well, there is simply something wrong here. The girl is hysterical, or deluded, or something. This can be dealt with later. For now, she knows what she will do. Get the victim outside, get to a neighbor's, and have the neighbors call the police. Whether she will return to the battleground or wait for the calvary to arrive with heavy machine guns is not important right now. The victims must be saved. 

She turns to run to the basement stairs, pushing her daughter ahead of her. What she sees makes her stop dead. Barring the way is a set of stout iron bars. In looking at them she can tell they are firmly locked shut. 

Clarice wheels to look behind her, and the world wheels and spins with her. She is no longer in Buffalo Bill's basement; she is in a basement hallway she has been in before. A chair awaits her at the end of the corridor, and in the dim fluorescent light she can see reflections from a Plexiglas wall. 

A wave of horror hits her and makes her shiver, like being sucked under a cold tide. She takes a sudden deep breath. This isn't right. Susana does not belong here, and neither does she. And she knows whom her audience is with. 

She doesn't quite understand why she walks down the hall, but one reason is largely apparent. To be honest, she has nowhere else to go. Her feet carry her down to Dr. Lecter's basement cell against her volition, as if he can control them even despite his confinement and constraints. 

And he is there, standing in his cell, but even so this is not right. Dr. Lecter stands there and observes her as coolly as he did all those years ago, but this is the _wrong _Dr. Lecter. He is older, dressed in a beautifully cut suit tailored to his slim frame. In one hand he holds an ebony cane with a gold head. She remembers that: she gave it to him for his birthday once. 

No, not even that was right. The alternate personality he constructed gave him that. She had not. 

"Hello, Clarice," Dr. Lecter says. "Come to make amends?" 

Clarice blinks. "What are you talking about?" she says. 

Dr. Lecter chuckles. "Why, to come back to me," he says. "So that we can be a family again, just as we once were." 

Clarice's lips twist. "You...you _brainwashed _me," she seethes. The knowledge that Dr. Lecter cracked her like an egg has long been a sore point for Clarice Starling. She had spent her life fighting for the lambs; she had never meant to become his plaything. 

Dr. Lecter chuckles and shakes his head. "Did I?" he asks. He steps forward, and the world whirls and shimmers again. His clothing ripples and changes, shifting from a blue jumpsuit to a white T-shirt and pants. His cell changes, as well; now there are the iron bars and sawhorses with flashing lights separating them, and the room is large and airy. Susana is still beside her, only now dressed in a similar suit to what she wore then. She is one of Chilton's and Krendler's helpers, the nameless agents helping drag her away from the modular cell they had set up for Dr. Lecter in the courthouse. Clarice turns and breaks away. 

"Oh, and Clarice? Your case file," Dr. Lecter says, but what he holds out is not the heavily marked-up folder that they had given him on Buffalo Bill. She pulls away from her tormentors and runs forwards to the boundary marked by the sawhorses. But what is in Dr. Lecter's hand is not the case file. Instead he hands her a set of couture magazines. 

These magazines are not the ones she used to buy occasionally in Buenos Aires. Those were a pleasant hobby, nothing more. She used to show them to Susana, who used to cut them out and make paper dolls out of them. At the time she'd considered it harmless fun, a mother-daughter activity. They'd compared their opinions of the outfits. Once she had awakened, she had despised the activity. What a terrible mother, rotting her child's brain with all that froufrou. 

No, these magazines that Dr. Lecter hands her are older than Susana. They were the magazines she bought and hid in her underwear drawer in her duplex in Virginia, the ones that had seemed such a delicious perversion to her. How had he gotten them? 

She takes them, and then they are on her again, dragging her to the door. At the door, the courthouse shifts and she is suddenly in the midst of a bunch of suited men, walking calmly into a Quantico meeting room. Susana is there, sitting on the right in a sober blue suit. There is a card clipped to her lapel that Clarice connects with the DOJ lackeys. The door closes. Krendler, Sneed, all those wolves and jackals all gathering to kick her while she was down, but it is Susana who stands up, holding the magazine in her hands. 

"Agent Starling, isn't it true that you placed this ad?" she demands, waving a twenty-five-year-old copy of _Vogue. _

__Clarice shakes her head and looks over at Sneed. There he is, the piece of crap, with his F-Bird grinding away in his pocket and his stupid tiepin microphone that fooled no one with an ounce of brains. Then she looks back at her daughter. Why is Susana now her inquisitor? 

"I didn't do it," she says, and shakes her head. "I never saw it before." 

"Aren't these yours?" Susana queries again. "How do you account for the fact that these are the same magazines you used to show me when I was a little girl?" 

Clarice bolts upright in her chair, driven by the need to defend herself as well as sheer bafflement. Time and space and the entire goddam planet seem to have gone crazy. She turns to see Dr. Hannibal Lecter sitting next to Sneed, dressed in a simple gray suit. 

"Obviously she is lying," Dr. Lecter agrees. "A pleasant lie is worse than the unpleasant truth." 

"It's still a lie," Susana says, and suddenly draws a pistol from under her suit jacket. Clarice jumps. 

"Susana, _what the hell are you doing? _I'm your _mother--," _Clarice gasps, but the gun is swinging to bear on her. Clarice looks at the men here to sit in judgment on her: are they going to let her be executed here and now? 

A great gout of flame comes from the barrel of the .45, and there is a loud _boom _she connects with the old .45, and Clarice -- 

wakes up sitting up in bed, her comforter a big soft lump in her arms, her body sheened with cold sweat. Her breath wheezes in her lungs. But she is whole and unmarked, and this is not some mythical FBI conference room but her own bedroom. Her daughter may be missing, but she is not planning to shoot her dead. 

As her pulse begins to settle, she stares about her nice, clean, safe little upper-middle-class bedroom. Glowing green numbers tell her it is 2:00 AM. She gets up and pads into her bathroom. The light seems bright and she flinches. Her own reflection in the mirror is somewhat wan and haggard, but that is only to be expected given the circumstances. 

The urge to go look in Susana's room is strong, but she knows perfectly well that Susana is not there. She also knows perfectly well that she has managed to freeze most of her emotions in order to work on the disappearance as a case, and entering Susana's room will threaten the delicate balance. 

The dream seems vivid to Clarice, and she shakes her head for a moment. Seeing Susana in Bill's pit, now that was disturbing. The rest....well hell, she's been under stress. It's amazing what her mind will come up with. All it means is that she has to find her daughter. That's all it can mean...can't it?

...

The only sound in the bedroom is the quiet tick of a clock. He can hear his own breathing, if he pauses to concentrate on it. Susana's is deep and regular, reflecting her deep sleep. He stands still, watching her sleeping form. Dr. Lecter needs to keep exceptionally quiet so that she does not stir. Like him – and like her mother – she is a light sleeper. 

He suspects she would be troubled if she awoke to find him watching her. That does not bother him; he can stay very still when he wants to, as still as he was when embraced by the straitjacket and hand truck back in the asylum. All he wants to do is watch. When Susana was a baby, he would occasionally do just this: stand there and watch her sleep. He had spent hours doing it, sometimes until it was very late. 

But now maintaining quiet is important; she will be perturbed if she awakes and he is there. He takes a few moments to observe her face. With her eyes closed, her resemblance to Clarice is strong. Stronger, he thinks, than her similarities to him. Her hand displays little scarring, and he is pleased. Her eyes are the strongest biological tie between them. 

He watches her shoulders rise and fall as she sleeps, and for a moment he is reminded of Clarice in the bed ath the house on the Chesapeake. In these past eleven years she has grown up far too fast for Dr. Lecter's liking. He remembers her as a little girl, the five-year-old girl-child she was when Clarice took her away from him. Lying in the bed is a young woman. 

In the bedroom there is a mirror, and despite the low light in the room he can make out his own reflection. His eyes reflect the poor light redly. Dr. Lecter wears the same white shirt and jacket that he wore today shopping in Asunción. The dark jacket against white shirt reminds him of a vampire standing over the maiden's bed, and he smiles coolly at his reflection. Calmly his lips shape the word _Nosferatu, _but there is neither voice nor air behind them.

Purchases fill the room around them: a new television, a DVD player, a laptop, and a new stereo. She had been excited and grateful. He supposes Clarice had refused to spoil her as gleefully as he had when she was a child. Even then, after her therapy, she had objected, claiming that Susana would never learn the value of a dollar if she was given everything. Dr. Lecter did not understand then, and he does not quite understand now. He had always liked very much to shop, and he had denied Susana no more than he had ever denied himself. 

Tomorrow the cable company will come and wire Susana's room for cable and Internet. Dr. Lecter has learned a fair amount about the Internet via the chat rooms and websites of the hacker community. There are those who would be surprised at that, but in the hacker community Dr. Lecter has found several things he liked very much. 

He has found people of intelligence and curiousity, seeking interesting problems to solve and opportunities to build their skills. It is true that their personal habits and diet are rather far from his own fastidiousness and gourmet tastes, but still, kindred minds are a rarity. He has also found ways to employ the Internet to accomplish his own goals, and along the way he has been able to slake his own curiousity. Now, he understands a great deal about TCP/IP, the _lingua franca _of the Internet, and how he can use it. In some ways, computer programming has been an entire new world to him. Dr .Lecter has no interest in creating worms or viruses solely to be destructive – such things tend to draw the interest of law enforcement. However, he _does _appreciate the knowledge of how to appear to come from one place while actually being in another. 

Should Clarice attempt to use his online peregrinations to track him, she will find a difficult time of it. He has learned how to cover his tracks and she will not have an easy time of it. But she will be on the case, he has no doubt of that. 

As he watches his daughter sleep, he considers.

The sensible thing to do would be to start more intensive therapy right away. In his cabinets are plenty of drugs. Hypnotic drugs, euphoric drugs, light soporifics. He has extensive notes that he took while speaking to his daughter online, and in carefully studying her behavior he has a fairly good idea what makes her tick. In some ways, she has become more common than he would like. Her tastes in clothing are not his own; she turned up her nose at dresses both in Buenos Aires and today in Asunción. Dr. Lecter prefers more elegant clothing. 

Her tastes in music are enough to make a grown man cry; no classical or philharmonic interests there. Electric guitars played by long-haired men in tight pants; it is plebeian and revolting to the doctor's tender ears. Still, such thngs can be changed with time and care. 

He is well aware of what more intensive therapy will require. Drugs and hypnosis will help her along the path to acceptance, smoothing the way and making it easier for her. He is determined that she undergo as little emotional trauma as possible. Even so, the bond between mother and daughter will need to be frayed, if not sundered entirely. Fortunately, she is sixteen, and at that age fighting with her mother is to be expected. It serves his purposes well. 

But there is part of him that does not want to go to more extreme measures just yet. Today was a great deal of fun. It reminds him of when she was young; if he discovered she wanted something he would usually give it to her, delighting in the thought of seeing her happy. Perhaps a few more days, then he will start in with psychotherapy and hypnosis and an appropriate drug regimen. 

He realizes that he spoiled her then and does so now. _Why _is another matter, one which speaks deeper to him. He remembers Mischa in the garden, a chubby two-year-old who was unafraid of him and put her pink hands on his face, like the kiss of small starfish. Six decades later, Susana did the same. Dr. Lecter blinks twice and summons the image of Susana at age two, toddling into the living room where he read. She had beamed to see him and held up her arms to be held. Once installed on his lap she had patted his face with a gleeful smile and complete lack of awareness that anyone had ever done this before her, completing the circle effortlessly. She had maroon eyes like his own instead of blue, but other than that, much the same. Her babyish chortle had been high-pitched and pleased and very much like Mischa's. Then he had needed no drugs or hypnosis; she had been daddy's girl from her birth and would have so remained, had Clarice not awoken and taken her away from him. 

It is his hope, now, that the therapy will be short-term, and that he can quickly recover the small girl who loved him with all her heart and soul. If he can awaken the small girl within the young woman, then the unpleasant parts will be very short-term and the results very satisfactory. 

Even now, he wants to take a bit to observe the young woman she has become. Once therapy starts, she will become something else, and Dr .Lecter is not quite so eager to transform her as he once did her mother. The though of Clarice Starling is not without pain, even eleven years after she left him. 

Susana stirs, and the doctor's reverie is frozen for a moment. He stares down at her silently and is satisfied when she does not move again. Calmly he pads from the room, silent in his socks, and turns to watch her for just a moment more from the hallway. 

A few more days. Then he will start therapy. But only after a few more days. 


	8. Troubled Women

  


Clarice Starling stands in her house, empty except for her, and looks around. Here and now is where it gets depressing. She constantly expects Susana to come out of her room, or the bathroom, or in the door from a friend's. Constantly, she gets to remind herself that Susana is not there. Her daughter has fled the continent. 

It's times like this, as evening slips into night, that Clarice sometimes takes refuge in the bottle of Jack Daniel's that she keeps in the cupboard. There is a part of her that objects strongly to that, believing it a crutch for the weak. But she _has _been dreadfully hurt, and sometimes that crutch helps. 

The bottle is calling to her tonight, suggesting that she salve her pain in the sweet and powerful balm of the whiskey. Trying to ignore that call is becoming increasingly difficult. She is simultaneously trying to watch television and thinking that she ought to be working on the case file. Bowman has been getting the word out: most of the South American authorities are on board and out looking for her daughter. Whichever nation captures Dr. Lecter and returns Susana to her mother will have a bargaining chip to cash in with the US, and so they are perhaps more eager to help than they would have in a normal custody dispute. 

The telephone rings, and for a moment Clarice's heart leaps. Will it be Susana? Part of her desperately wants to believe that it is. But by now, another part of her reminds her that Dr .Lecter has probably drugged her up good and has already started depriving her of her mind and volition.

Still, she picks it up and tries to nurture that one tiny guttering flame of hope. 

"Hello?" she says. 

"Claire. It's 'Delia." Ardelia's voice is tense. 

Her heart larrups in her chest. Other than Clarice, Amika Bridell – Ardelia Mapp's daughter – is one of the people on earth Susana has been closest to. Privately, Clarice has hoped that her daughter might try to contact Amika. Has she? 

"Hey," she says. "What's up?" 

"We got a package," Ardelia says. "Addressed to Amika. Who's running the investigation on Susana? Bowman? We need to get a forensics team in here, but I wanted to call you first." 

Clarice's free hand closes into a fist. "Yeah, Bowman," she answers. "What's...what was it? Is it from Susana?" 

Ardelia pauses a moment before answering. "I think so," she says. "Just get over here. You can ID her handwriting better than I can." 

In a way it is very Ardelia: no bullshit, to the point, get to work. Clarice's eyes fill with grateful tears. Ardelia doesn't volunteer what the contents of the package were, and Clarice doesn't ask again. It is easier to get out to her Mustang and haul ass out to _maison Bridell. _ Ardelia lives not far away, in the same town. Her house is a pleasant ranch in a development of other pleasant ranches. She can see Ardelia's form in the window as the Mustang's headlights splash onto the home. 

Special Agent Harold Bridell lets her in. For a moment she looks at him: he is tall and muscular. 'Built like a brick shithouse' is the particular phrase that comes to mind whenever she sees him: no matter what he wears he looks like he is about to burst out of it. He is black as the African warriors he descends from; eyes and teeth are the only white parts of his face. She personally feels sorry for anyone who decides to try to fight him. 

"Hello, Claire," he says, his voice deep and booming. "They're in the living room." He steps back so that she can walk by. 

"Thank you, Harry," she says.

"As soon as we realized what it was we had, we called you," he adds, as if Clarice has accused him of deliberately tampering with the evidence. She nods and proceeds into Ardelia's living room. 

Ardelia and Amika are both there. They are sitting at a table over an opened package. Identical looks of concern are on their faces. Ardelia looks a bit pained as Clarice enters the room, sympathetic pain painting her face. 

On the table is a small cardboard box. Clarice recognizes her daughter's handwriting on the top. The package has been sent via FedEx from a known remailer in California. Little to no hope of tracking it that way. Dr. Lecter has used them before; they throw away and shred the original packaging. By now any clue from the postmark is gone. 

"Miss Starkey, I didn't know it was from Susana," Amika says shyly, as if she has done something wrong. "There was a letter in it, and this." She gestures to a small velvet box. Clarice thinks for all of three seconds before opening it. 

No manufacturer's mark on the box. Nylon or silk lining on the top, and fuzzy velvet cardboard on the bottom. In the middle, a ring with a shining emerald setting. Clarice scowls. 

The ring is mounted high so that she can see the letters AB-SS engraved on the inside. This is not her daughter's doing; this is Dr .Lecter. He knew she would be called in to see this, and he _wanted _her to see this. A clever reminder of what he had once done to her. 

The back of her neck burns hot and her cheeks flush red. She takes the ring out and examines the inside of the box. Forensics won't like it, but Forensics can fucking well deal. Nothing there that should be there; no message or anything. Clarice lets out a frustrated sigh. 

Next to the box is a letter written on fine vellum. Susana's handwriting is instantly recognizable on it, just as she suspected. 

_Dear Amika, _

  


_Hey girl, what's happening? Don't worry about me. I'm fine. Better than fine. Sorry if I scared you. Love ya girl, Burn this. Tell my mom I'm okay. _

  


_Susana _

  


  


__Clarice feels rage burning hot in her gut and on her cheeks. This is exactly what he knew she would feel. _Wanted _her to feel. Just as Clarice had once sent a ring to Ardelia – a ring that's probably still somewhere around here – Susana has done the same. At his behest, no doubt, the similarities are too obvious for Susana to have done this on her own. 

Sadistic _bastard. _He has Susana and he has to remind Clarice of what he's going to do. Forensics will have a go at it, but she doubts they'll come up with much. Dr. Lecter knows their tricks. 

All the same, she waits until she is back in the Mustang before she starts to cry. 

...

Susana stands in her room and looks at herself in the mirror. She is not pleased. Her father has told her that he wants to take her to the opera tonight. When she was little, going to the opera with papa was a rare treat. Now it is not something she really enjoys, but she'll go with him. He wants to do it, and she feels like she owes him. It will make him happy.

Dressing for the occasion is not to her pleasure; the opera, as he told her, is white tie or black tie. They had argued politely over clothing in Buenos Aires. She remembered that he always liked to dress nicely; custom-made or tailored suits. Thinking back, she cannot remember ever seeing him not wearing a tie. He has kept pictures of her younger self, which reminded him and sustained him through the years of solitude. He is in some of the pictures, and in every one he is wearing a tie too. 

So he wants her to dress formally herself, and that is not something she enjoys. They had compromised: she wears a dress that falls to her ankles. No stockings; she'd stood firm on that. Only her feet are visible so it doesn't matter anyway. Even so, she feels uncomfortable and exposed in the dress. Around her neck is a necklace he bought her in Buenos Aires: a trim, neat gold chain that has a single red stone hanging from it. It sets off her eyes nicely. Susana has never been wildly fond of jewelry, but it _is _pretty and he wanted her to have it. 

She does not understand his insistence on her carrying a purse but not putting her stuff in it. A purse is something you use, in Susana's eyes. Hers is a relatively simple, utilitarian thing: it's full of stuff like her wallet and keys and her new Argentine passport and gum and all the stuff she carries around with her. He did not seem to approve of all the stuff she had in it. The question that comes to mind – _then why carry one? _-- is not one he seems to have an answer for. 

But no, he wants her to carry a purse to the opera but it should be empty or only have a few things in it. A bag is part of the outfit: he lectured her about that before. She doesn't understand it. Weird to think her own father is more into girly stuff than she is, but that is how it seems. She does not know that one of the first topics of conversation between her parents was her mother's bag.

But other than that things have been going well, all things considered. He's been buying her all sorts of stuff. She remembers that from her early childhood in Buenos Aires: if she wanted something she would ask him and almost invariably get it. Her mother had disapproved even then, opining that he would spoil her. 

Susana doesn't feel spoiled; she feels slightly ill-at-ease, and not just because he made her dress up for the opera. She had wanted to see him; she hadn't seen him for eleven years. She hadn't known he was Hannibal Lecter when she was little, but she does now. All the gifts are a little dizzying; he has bought her literally anything she _looked _at in the stores, and at this point she privately thinks it's a little overboard. 

Immediately after discovering her parentage courtesy of the FBI's crime labs, she had been humiliated and abashed. How was she supposed to go to school now that everyone knew her father was a serial killer and a cannibal? Even those last few days had contained several japes and taunts. The idea of escaping to another country sounded pretty good. No more people staring at her in the hallways, thinking _there goes the cannibal girl. _No more looking at her mother and wondering why in the hell she'd never told Susana who her father was. And her father had been there, casually explaining what to do. 

In retrospect it had been easy, since she already had a car. She sort of missed her car; she'd bought it from an old lady down the street with money she'd been saving from working summers and that sort of thing. She'd always saved her money; her mother had taught her that. But really, he'd done the hard part. She'd gone to the Argentine consulate and he'd already faxed them her birth certificate and other papers. All she'd needed to do was stop in at a place that did passport pictures, show up, sign a few documents, and presto, instant passport. The tickets, likewise, were already reserved and paid for. All she had to do was show up and get them. On the plane, she'd been nervous that they would catch her, but her father had assured her that she just had to act like she belonged and she would be fine. 

They'd stayed overnight in Havana, father and daughter but almost strangers, and then flown to Buenos Aires in the morning. That was when he'd bought her a lot of stuff – clothes, mostly, as Susana had come to him with literally the clothes on her back. Traveling to his home in Paraguay had taken more time than normal. Then he'd taken her shopping in Asunción.

Her Spanish is pretty good, considering she last spoke it at a five-year-old level and took it in school. It is warm and sunny in Paraguay and she likes the climate. Her father is rich and apparently leads a charmed life. Even so, she is beginning to have some doubts. 

She is torn. The fact that her father will be incarcerated if he is caught is not lost on her. She would hope they wouldn't throw a man as old as he was in prison, but he has assured her that they will. She was angry at her mother before, but now that is fading. She is somewhat afraid to go back to Virginia and face the music, but what is she supposed to do? Her mom is probably freaking out, and Susana knows she'll be severely punished for this if she goes back. Plus, if she goes back, her mom will demand to know where Dr. Lecter is hiding, and that means he either has to flee and set up somewhere else, or go to prison for the rest of his life. Never seeing her mother again seems heartless, though, and she doesn't want to do that. 

In Buenos Aires, her father went to a jeweler ; he had already custom-ordered a ring and had to pick it up. He told her to send a letter to Amika along with the ring. She did as he asked, but wondered why. He dictated what he wanted her to say and everything. Amika will tell her parents, and her mom will find out about it soon enough. Why couldn't she write her own letter to her friend? It's suspicious, and misgivings are poking at her. 

She can't call her mother, not from here. Her father has made that much clear. There will be a trap-and-trace on her mother's phone, and they will be able to trace it here. In order to call her mother, she will have to go to Buenos Aires, and that will have to wait. For now, Buenos Aires is likely teeming with FBI and the Argentine authorities. Eventually they will go away, but not now. Nor can she email or IM her; her father has forbidden it. She is afraid to disobey him. Part of that is that she always _was _afraid to disobey him, when she was little and he was a god-like figure in her life, and part of that is knowing that he has killed and eaten people. Though she doesn't think he would do anything like that to her, antagonizing such a man doesn't sound like a clever idea. 

She is in this situation and she doesn't see a way to extricate herself from it without hurting somebody. It's enough to make her stomach ache thinking about it. 

There _has _to be a way. She managed to sneak all the way to Cuba without her mother knowing. Maybe, once she has a better idea of the lay of the land, she can figure out a way to sneak to a phone somewhere. Somewhere far enough where they won't track him. Asunción is right near the border with Argentina; there has to be a way to call from there. She was born in Argentina; they have to let her in, don't they? But even though she is terrified of what her mother will say, she knows she ought to call her. Just to assure her that she is all right. That will have to do for now until she can figure out her next move. 

The door opens and her father enters, wearing dark trousers and a white shirt. A black cummerbund circles his waist and a dark jacket is hung over his shoulder. He looks at her approvingly and nods. 

"You look lovely," he says. Susana smiles nervously and grabs the fancy purse he bought her at the Coach store in Buenos Aires. Only a few necessary things have been transferred into it from her normal purse, since apparently innocent millions will die a horrible death if there is an empty gum wrapper in her purse at the opera. At least that's the way he's made it seem. 

"Thanks," she says nervously, and he turns his head a fraction in displeasure. That much she remembers: he always insisted that she not use informal speech around him. "Thank you," she corrects herself, and he nods approvingly. 

"Come," he says easily. "The opera house here is quite beautiful. A copy of the Scala in Milan, you know." 

Milan. Italy. He lived in Florence for a while; she knows that from all the Hannibal Lecter sites on the Internet. She also knows about Rinaldo Pazzi. The memory of the images, lovingly rendered on the websites she saw, makes her shiver. It's hard to reconcile the papa she remembers with that. 

"Is it?" she asks, more because she doesn't know what else to say. 

"Yes. Quite attractive. I used to take you to the opera now and then in Buenos Aires; do you remember that?" 

She smiles nervously again and nods. She can remember that, although it is fudged a bit by the years. She remembers the ornate box they sat in, and how happy she was to be with him and her mama. She remembers her nanny teaching her Italian and how she had tried to understand what the singers were saying, but it was difficult to make out the words. 

He walks her out to the car and courteously holds the door for her. He seems quite pleased, and she tries to be for her father's sake. The opera house is majestic, and she stares at it and murmurs something appreciative. People seem to be impressed by them, although a few are clearly trying to figure out if this young woman and old man are father and daughter or something else. The idea makes her grin nervously. The box itself is as ornate as the one in Buenos Aires that she remembers from her childhood. The usher who brought them there stares at them curiously for a moment while he seats them. Dr. Lecter tips him quickly. Susana smiles and feels out of place. It's little things like these that remind her that she is a foreigner here, even if she can speak the language. 

The opera itself is about what she expects: it's nice and all, but it just isn't her thing. She likes rock music herself, although she has already picked up that it is better to not remind him of that. He bought her a few CD's in Asunción, though. Maybe this is meeting him halfway. She gets the idea that she'd have to do that a lot or else they'd end up at each other's throats. 

But he is happy and he seems to enjoy it. She tries to appreciate it for his sake. She tries to understand the Italian, but she can't make any of it out. It's been years since she spoke it anyway. What was her old nanny's name, anyway? Mónica, that was it. Mónica would probably be disappointed, because Susana can't make out heads or tails of it. Of course, if they were talking normally instead of singing she might have had better luck. 

He seems pleased throughout the opera, and she puts up with it for his sake. As well as her own, when you come down to it. While she's living here it behooves her to not directly antagonize him. Even so, the atmosphere in the car going home is a bit strained. He is pleased. Can he tell that she is thinking of trying to contact her mother? It's hard to tell. She never hid anything from him before. 

Back at the house, she is glad for the chance to change out of the dress into comfortable flannel pants and a T-shirt. She is also glad to have some time alone. On her new desk is a new computer sporting a fast Internet connection. She sits at it and taps a pen against her teeth thoughtfully. The entire house is wired for a computer network. Will he be able to find out if she emails her mother or Amika? Maybe. Until she knows for sure she can't risk it. 

But then if she does, he'll end up in prison. She came here because she wanted to meet him, not put him in prison. The fact that he is eighty-two and doesn't have much time left is a tremendous obstacle. He can't spend the rest of his life in prison. Not by her hand. What kind of daughter would she be if she did that? The thought keeps gnawing at her like hungry rats feasting on a helpless prisoner's wounds. 

Irresistible force, immovable object. This is as close as it gets in the real world. If she continues on this path, she may never see her mother again. If she tries to return to the fold, her father may well be captured. 

The computer offers her access to the Internet, but no easy answers. Eventually she abandons the PC and flops down on her bed. That was delivered today too; a big, comfortable bed. She has room to roll around as much as she would like. 

But the bed doesn't help either; she can't sleep. 


	9. Doubting the Leader

  


_Author's note: The book Dr. Lecter refers to is indeed 'El Túnel' by Ernesto Sábato. Translation is by me, myself, and I, with supporting help from babelfish.altavista.com and the University of Chicago Spanish-English dictionary. So any goofs in it are strictly my own fault, not the doctor's. _

  


  


The conference room is a place with its mind on its work. It is much like any conference room in any corporate settings: a bland table, padded chairs, a white board, a projector. Yet here is different; this is a place of purpose. For Clarice Starling, this is a place of justice: it is here that the FBI is at its best, relentlessly hunting those who would do harm to others, taking up its sword and defending the weak. 

Lloyd Bowman sits at the head of the table and observes the agents working the case calmly. Clarice has a place here, but she can't help but feel somehow different from everyone else. In other cases, she has been part of the team. She still is, but now she is the victim as well. She can feel it in the way other people treat her. She is the wounded hunting dog in the pack, and there is a sympathy in the air that she is both grateful for and despises utterly. 

"All right," Bowman says, in a businesslike tone. "I understand we've got a few things coming in. Hartman, how about it?" 

David Hartman, sitting next to Clarice, pushes a manila folder over to Bowman. "The South American authorities have been reasonably cooperative," he says. "About as good as can be expected, I think. Major cultural centers – concert halls, stuff like that – have all been notified. I got a few reports in from those, and that may be a possibility." 

"The staff was asked to be on the lookout for an older man and a young woman sitting in the fancy seats." 

Bowman purses his lips. "Was Dr. Lecter's picture distributed to them? Or the composite drawing we have?" He nods at Clarice, as if noting that the updated composite picture they have of Dr. Lecter is from her doing. He stops, and Clarice can feel that odious sympathy – _oh, poor Clarice, this must be so hard for you – _emanating from him. Goddamn it, she has been hurt but she is not weak. 

Hartman shakes his head. "No, but I did send Susana's yearbook picture down there. Dr. Lecter has probably altered his appearance, and I was afraid that sending a picture might influence things. Right now we need to cast our net as wide as we can. I had a feeling we'd get tons of crap, and we probably will, but that's better than screening him out by narrowing it down. It's likely that Dr. Lecter has surgically altered his own appearance since..." he trails off, and Clarice tenses again. _Since Clarice came back, _is what he means to say. 

"Go ahead and say it," she says tonelessly. "Since I came back." 

Hartman shrugs. 

Bowman nods slowly, as if acknowledging both Hartman's strategy and Clarice's stoic stance. 

"Dr. Lecter may have made her dye her hair, and he may have made her wear contact lenses," Hartman continues, "but...after reviewing the files...I think it's not likely he has...surgically altered her yet." 

The thought of Susana lying unconscious on a bed, with Dr. Lecter standing over her with a scalpel gleaming in his hand, makes Clarice's stomach drop. 

"We have a few possibles. One is the Buenos Aires Philharmonic. Older man, younger woman, seated in one of the fancy boxes. Also, a few of the fancy stores – Coach, Chanel, places like that – report that a man fitting Dr. Lecter's description and a girl fitting Susana's were shopping there earlier. That one looks like a positive: a couple of sales clerks noticed that the man's hand was scarred, and the girl could understand Spanish but had trouble speaking it. She spoke to her father in English." 

Clarice tries to force herself to think about it like a case. Freezing it is something she has had mixed success at. When she isn't paying attention it has a tendency to thaw. This is her _daughter, _for Christ's sake. And...and..._him. _

__Possibiles. At one time she'd wanted her name on the Possibles Board. Now possibles consists of sightings of a highly dangerous, amoral sociopath who has her daughter in his clutches. 

__"Dr. Lecter fled Buenos Aires when I came back to the US," she says. 

Hartman shrugs. "Maybe he went back," he says. 

Clarice shakes her head. It's too obvious. Dr. Lecter has been a fugitive from justice for decades now. Although he has a taste for fancy things, the unlovely concept that _you don't shit where you eat _is one he knows well, even if he would never phrase it that way. 

"Also, we have a possible sighting at a mall in Rio de Janeiro. Old man, young woman, spent a lot of money on jewelry and jeans and stuff." 

"Any other sightings in Rio?" Bowman asks.

"No, except for the fact that Dr. Lecter originally fled to Rio after he escaped," Hartman replies. 

Clarice ponders. She knows more of South America than the others; she lived there for several years. Rio is...unlikely. They speak Portuguese there. Dr. Lecter is proficient in Portuguese – maybe not fluent, unless he has lived there recently – but Susana can't speak it. 

Unlikely, she decides. Dr. Lecter isn't going to take her somewhere where she's going to stick out the minute she opens her mouth. That still points to Buenos Aires. 

"The last possible we have is in Asunciòn, Paraguay. A sighting at the opera house there. Same deal: older man, very young woman, big fancy box. The usher said they were talking in some other language." 

Bowman nods. "All right," he says. "Anything else?" 

The profiler shakes his head. "Nope," he said. "No other sighting in Paraguay either." 

Bowman taps his fingers thoughtfully. "The evidence seems to point to Buenos Aires," he says, his tone a bit hedging. "The perp is familiar with the area, and the...," he stops and glances at Clarice with one of those sympathetic glances she both appreciates and hates. "The victim's accent and all is going to fit in there. Even if it's not Buenos Aires, it may be somewhere else in Argentina, and it _does _seem to match the perp's MO." 

Clarice pauses. The perp's MO. Bowman is referring to the fact that Dr. Lecter, a native of Baltimore, came back to the US from Florence and set up shop in Maryland. He has the habit of sticking to what he knows, particularly when he believes he can walk undetected with the herd. 

All the same, something in her tells her to wait. Something isn't right here. Dr. Lecter fled Florence never to return. He _did _return to the Maryland area, but after many years. Is Buenos Aires a new Baltimore, or is Buenos Aires a new Florence? Guessing wrong will slow them down at best. At worst it will give Dr. Lecter time to brainwash Susana into...whatever he means to make her into. 

"We ought to look at Paraguay, too," she says. 

It would be easy to hate Bowman if he sneered at her; if he called her an idiot; if he openly opposed her. But he doesn't. He simply nods. 

"We _will _look at Paraguay," he says calmly. "I'll make a phone call to the Paraguayan authorities after the meeting and make sure they're on their toes. But the evidence is pointing to Buenos Aires, and our best hope for a safe return is to concentrate our resources where they'll do us the most good. I can send the FBI's kidnapping experts, and I will." His voice is even and calm, as if Clarice will burst into tears unless she is handled gently. More of the hateful sympathy for the weak. "But I can't send them two places at once, and I can't send half to Paraguay and half to Argentina. It's an all-or-nothing thing; these people are a team." 

Gentle, reasonable, just the way she has been with victims before. _No, I can't wave a wand and bring your loved one back. _And it does make sense. Perhaps Clarice is simply too close to it all, and should trust him. Perhaps her fear and terror and anger over her daughter make it impossible for her to make an effective analysis of the situation. 

All the same, the thought nags in the back of her head. _What if he's wrong? _

...

The house is quiet, and in some ways that is almost weird. A few of the servants live in the house, but once their usual workday is done they retire to their rooms. Susana hasn't been able to hear anything from their quarters – no music, no chatting on the phone, nothing. It's sort of weird. Don't they have their own lives? 

Her father is in his library, reading. That much she remembers. It is nice to have some time alone, and she supposes he wants his own time to himself. He has been down there for perhaps forty-five minutes. 

She has decided to ask him directly about calling her mother. Yes, she knows, she has to be careful and she may not be able to see her mother, not yet. But a phone call may help things along. They can travel somewhere in northern Argentina and make the call from there. Or Brazil, that's not _that _far away either. She doesn't speak Portuguese, but he probably does, and all she wants is a phone call. That's not too much to ask, is it? 

Okay. She's not asking that much. So why is she afraid to ask him? As she walks down to the library, she finds her knees are trembling and and her stomach is churning. Maybe he will be angry, but she hasn't seen him ever get angry. Even when she was little, he didn't yell or scream. All he needed then was a sharp word or a displeased tone of voice and she would be in tears. 

Her father is sitting at his desk, a small paperback book in his hands, the picture of ease and content. A glass of wine is handy for his thirst. He puts the book down and tilts his head as she stands in the doorway. A small smile comes over his face. 

"Hello," he says pleasantly. 

"Hi," she says, and feels her palms sweat. For a moment a heavy silence hangs in the room. Perhaps small talk will help. "What...what book are you reading?" 

Dr. Lecter lifts the book from the desk. "_El Túnel. _By Ernesto Sábato. Have you heard of it?" 

Susana shakes her head. "Should I have?" she asks. 

Dr. Lecter's eyes become slightly veiled as he speaks. "Had you remained in Argentina, you would have," he says, and in his tone there is a hint of danger. "It is relatively well known. Sábato is a wonderful modern novelist. I like this work of his in particular." 

Susana nods. "What is it about?" she asks curiously. 

"It is about a painter named Juan-Pablo Castel," Dr. Lecter informs her. "He is a painter who feels himself...misunderstood. He meets a woman named Maria Iribarne and grows obsessed with her. Perhaps he is mad; his behavior in the novel leads me to think that he may have been bipolar or slightly schizophrenic." He chuckles. "Though it is foolish indeed to try and diagnose the psychological illnesses of a fictional character." 

Susana isn't sure what to say. "You said you like it," she says, groping for her thoughts. "Why?" 

"I suppose I see some of myself in him," Dr. Lecter admits. He flips to the back of the book and opens it. "Here. Listen, it will be good for your Spanish." His voice grows faint and harsh as if to reflect the words of a madman pondering his insane view of the world in a cheap art studio. "_En todo caso habìa un túnel, oscuro y solitario: el mìo, el túnel en que habìa transcurrido mi infancia, mi juventud, toda mi vida." _His eyes meet hers, and there is something frightening in them. He eyes her carefully for a moment. "Did you understand that?" 

"In any case," she recites, "there had been a tunnel, dark and solitary...my own. The tunnel in which...," she ponders, trying to place _transcurrido. _The word order is different in English if she wants to make sense. "The tunnel in which my infancy, my childhood, all my life had passed." 

"Yes," Dr. Lecter adds. "Very good. Here is more of this passage: _Y en uno de esos trozos transparentes del muro de piedra yo habìa visto a esta muchacha y habìa creìdo ingenuamente que venìa por otro tùnel paralelo al mìo, cuanda en realidad pertencìa al ancho mundo, al mundo sin lìmites de los que no viven en tùneles, y quizà se habìa acercado a una de mis extrañas ventanas y habìa entrevisto el espectàculo de mi insalvable soledad, o le habìa intrigado el lenguaje mudo, la clave de mi cuadro." _

Susana blinks. There is something frightening in his eyes, and her ability to only half-understand the Spanish makes it more frightening. 

"Too much? Perhaps it is. Your Spanish will return in time. I'll do it for you; the passage is wonderful. _And in one of those transparent parts of the stone wall, I had seen this girl and believed – ingenously – that she came from another tunnel parallel to my own, when in reality she belonged to the wide world, the world without limits of those who do not live in tunnels. And perhaps she had approached one of my strange windows and had seen the spectacle of my irredeemable loneliness_, _or she was intrigued by dumb language, the key to my picture." _

__His voice is strong and his eyes alight with that disconcerting light, and suddenly Susana doesn't want to ask him about calling her mother anymore. 

"I, too, lived in a tunnel," Dr. Lecter says, "or a sort of one. The dark cellblock in the asylum." He shakes his head and scowls at the memory. "And my cell, too, had transparent walls, and it was there I saw your mother, and thought that perhaps _she _came from another tunnel like my own." His eyes lock onto hers, holding her easily. "But, your mother belonged to the wide world too, and perhaps she was only attracted to the spectacle of _my _loneliness, for she left me and took you with her." 

She isn't going to ask him about calling Mom, not now. He is loosening himself a bit and strange things are coming out. She swallows nervously and tastes electric spit on her tongue. 

As quickly as that, Dr. Lecter is himself again, back behind his pleasantly distinguished exterior. He puts the book down. "Now, then. Did you need to speak to me about something?" 

She shakes her head nervously and works her jaw. "Well, I...it's nothing, really...," 

Dr. Lecter rises and walks over to her, putting his hands on her shoulders. She finds herself feeling trapped. His gaze is knowing and wise, much like it was when she was little. Even then, he always seemed to know if she had done something bad. 

And this knowledge has not departed him. "You've been thinking of your mother, haven't you?" he asks. 

A rill of fear runs through her. She's being silly; he's not going to hurt her. Still, she cannot lie to him. "Yes...sort of...how did you know?" 

He seems resigned, as if she has disappointed him in a way he was expecting her to. "You tensed visibly when I mentioned her." 

She wants to look away from his eyes but cannot break eye contact herself; her eyes are nailed to his. "Well...I...she's probably worried...I just wanted to _call _her...," 

He lets out a sigh and then walks back to his desk. "Of course she is," he says, once seated behind it. "Please, sit." 

She moves slowly to comply, watching him from over the expanse of the fine walnut desk. 

"Your mother is worried, doubtlessly," he agrees. "Still, Susana, you cannot simply pick up the phone and call her. Contact with her has to be very careful...for now." He can see her tension and smiles disarmingly. "Please, relax. I am not angry with you." 

It is hard to relax. She continues to watch him carefully. He laces his hands behind his neck and seems comfortable. He pours a second glass of white wine and offers it to her. "Here," he says calmly. "Try that. I believe you'll like it." 

She takes the wine and stares at it for a moment before sampling it. It is dry and tart on her tongue. Though maybe that's because her tongue is so dry. 

"Have you ever learned to taste wine?" he asks. 

She shrugs and smiles nervously. "No...not really," she admits. 

"Very well." A silver lighter appears in his hand as if by magic. A firm _click _resounds in the room and a blue flame appears from its tip, lighting a candle. For a moment Dr. Lecter cups his hands around it, nursing the small orange flame into life. 

"There," he says. "Hold the glass up to the candle so that you can see the flame through the light." 

Cautiously, she does, watching a slightly misshapen version of the flame dance through the glass. 

"Very good. Now, swirl the glass a bit to release the bouquet. Then hold it under your nose and inhale deeply." 

This she does too. The wine smells somewhat acrid and dry. Much like it tasted. 

"Hold the wine on your tongue for a moment. Wine-tasting is an art, and one worth learning to appreciate." Dr. Lecter indicates a small pile of unsalted water crackers on a silver dish. "First, take a moment to consider the aftertaste. There's no trick to it, really. Just think about what the aftertaste is like. Take one of those. It will clear your palate. There is also water over on the sideboard if you would like it."

Susana shakes her head. "It's all right," she says. 

He pours another glass and invites her to repeat the ritual. Silently, she does. He urges her to take her time; wine-tasting should be a pleasure. This glass is less tart and sweeter than before. 

"Now, then. Are you feeling perhaps more relaxed than before?" Dr. Lecter eyes her carefully, as if studying her. 

She is, and that seems a bit odd. She isn't a big drinker, but expecting two glasses of wine to do this is surprising. Perhaps she has less tolerance than she thinks. But she does feel more at ease, less tense. The wall between them is gone. 

"Susana, you know what will happen if I am caught, do you not?" 

She nods slowly. "Yes...they'll put you in prison." 

"Correct. I realize that you may be concerned for your mother's pain. Such is...your inheritance from her. I must ask you, though. When your mother took you from me, did she ever worry about allowing you to contact me?" 

She swallows. "No," she admits. 

"Did she ever express any concern for what _I _went through? Deprived of a wife and daughter I loved very much. She took you away. _Stole _you from your own father." 

She stares at the floor and trembles. 

"The answer isn't on your shoes, Susana. Answer the question, please." 

"No," she says again, her tone hushed and somehow defeated. 

"And don't you know what will happen when you return? Do you think she will be pleased with you? She'll press you for details on where I am. And she will be _enraged _at what you have done." 

"I know," she whispers, not sure where to respond. Her shoulders tense seemingly of their own volition. Her eyes close and it seems harder than normal to open them. 

"You needn't be upset," Dr. Lecter says, and she hears him stand and walk over to her. His hands touch her shoulders calmly. His voice is soothing. "There is no need to be upset. Some things may be painful to admit, but the pain will stem quickly, and you will have a better understanding of yourself." 

Susana bites her lip and wonders what to say to that. His hand touches the top of her head, pressing back slightly to urge her to raise it. Below his hand, her hair, the same color as her mother's; below that her troubled brain. 

"It is hard to admit that your mother's behavior was insensitive," Dr. Lecter continues, "but it may well be so. She is merely a person, flawed, just like yourself." 

"I...just...she's worried, she's got to be worried...," 

"A call would not ease her worry. It would simply exacerbate it." Dr. Lecter's tone is final and his logic irresistible. "Besides, Susana. A criminal incarcerated may think that his punishment is not just, but is that so?" 

"Mom isn't a criminal," Susana mumbles. 

Her father pauses for a second. "Not legally," he says. "Still. She took you away from me. Stole you away without so much as a goodbye. Has she told you of how she came to lose her own father?" 

Susana nods. It is hard to keep her eyes open. Was there something in that wine? "He...he died. He was shot." 

"Yes...the night watchman." That confuses her for a moment: she'd always thought her maternal grandfather was a cop. Yet the words don't want to come to express that. The only time she has ever felt like this before was once when she'd pulled a muscle in her back and her mother had given her a Valium to help her sleep. "But consider this, Susana. Her father died in a terrible accident. An _accident. _Yet she _deliberately _deprived _you _of your own father. Did that not cause you pain? Pain she should have known? One would think she would seek at any cost to spare her own daughter pain she had suffered herself. Yet, _deliberately, purposefully, _she did to you what had been done to her...at a younger age, no less." 

She swallows. "Yes," she answers. 

"And that was wrong, and she must be punished for that," Dr. Lecter concludes. 

That makes her pause. Punish? Her mother? Her mother is pretty straitlaced, except for driving. Yet she cannot form her objection to that into words, no matter how hard she tries. 

"But...," she trails off. The thoughts will not come. 

"Open your eyes, please." 

She opens her eyes. He has moved a crystal sphere in front of the flame; the flame glows through the facets and makes it seem like a tiny sun. She watches it with logy interest. 

"By now, you should be feeling _quite _relaxed." Dr. Lecter sounds amused. "Focus your attention on that, if you please." 

The dancing light is fascinating, and Susana leans forward to watch it. The candle flickers once and is reflected in the many facets. A rasp comes from behind her; she glances over her shoulder to see him dragging over a small fainting couch. He gestures for her to rise and lie on it, as Victorian women confined by corsets were wont to do. It is more comfortable on the couch. She can lie on her side and stare at the glowing globe easily, her hands laced together just below her chin. 

His voice is soothing, and Susana finds herself drifting into a very comfortable space. She is hard pressed to remember what he says, or what she herself says for that matter. There is some discomfort, but she is distanced from it all. It is much like when she was a little girl and her father tucked her in at night.

In the morning, she will awaken feeling refreshed and more at ease than she was. Her mother is suffering, but that is part of her mother's punishment. It is hard to know her mother is being punished, but it is fair: her papa has told her so. If she is concerned she should tell him and he will help her.

In the next few days, she doesn't ask about calling her mother. For now she has to be strong and resolute. Papa will help her to be strong, and Papa has told her that this is necessary. 

And after all, Papa knows best.


	10. Civil Disobedience

  


  


Dr. Lecter is pleased. 

Over the past few days, he has successfully managed to block Susana's concern over her mother. She hasn't mentioned it any more. In the end, it had proved to be quite simple: a sedative in the wine to help her relax, a bit of hypnosis, and the process had started. These first few steps were always the hardest. It was akin to sculpting, Dr. Lecter thought. The first few attempts with the chisel meant a great deal; if you made an error there, everything was for naught. 

A sculptor can always get another rock, but he cannot; he has only one daughter. He has been exceedingly careful, holding back where he can. He does not want her damaged; he simply wants her to accept the fact that she cannot return to the United States. In order to do this, the largest obstacle is her mother. 

It is Dr. Lecter's hope that the bond between Susana and her other parent need only be frayed; the rest will collapse on its own, after time and inattention. To actually sever the bond will require a great deal more work. This way is less intrusive. 

Dinner has been already been served. Susana is on the balcony in her room, overlooking the river. She has the portable CD player that he gave her; Dr. Lecter can hear it even from his own bedroom. She has it on loud, but not _too _loud. He can hear exceptionally well. It is that accursed rock music. System of a Down, she told him. 

Dr. Lecter draws up a syringe and examines the contents with a critical eye. The needle is quite fine; the wound will not bleed. In a way, it is funny. Dr. Lecter has shed blood with nary a shred of guilt before. When the blood in question is his daughter's, though, he finds himself exceedingly squeamish about shedding it, even in such small amounts as are caused by an injection. 

He walks calmly to Susana's room and knocks on the door. Politely he waits for a moment or two for her to respond. When no answer comes, he tilts his head curiously. The sound of the music – if one can _call _it that – is counterpointed by the click of computer keys. 

He isn't sure exactly what it is that prompts him to push the door open uninvited. Perhaps a subconscious hint, perhaps the ability of a wise old predator to sense danger on the wind. He pushes open the door and looks inside. 

Susana is sitting at her computer, her face painted oddly by the glow of the monitor. Headphones lie around her neck. She has an IM program open and is typing in am IM window. Dr. Lecter steps forward and takes it in carefully. She is typing a message to _Amikaaaah. _Dr. Lecter does not need an engraved invitation to know what she is doing. 

She turns when he enters, a look of displeasure crossing her face at his entry. Swiftly, Dr. Lecter crosses the room to her desk and turns the computer off. He can still move as swiftly as a man far younger when he chooses to. 

"What was that all about?" she asks, a bit annoyed. 

Dr. Lecter gives her a displeased look. "You cannot speak with your friends, Susana. Not from the computer in your own _room. _That is Ardelia Mapp's daughter; do you _really _think the FBI is not watching from the other end?" 

She gives him an equally displeased look. "I just wanted to tell my best friend that I'm all right and not to worry," she says, her tone icier than she has ever spoken to him before. 

He is surprised. She should know better. Besides, from her therapy, she should not be having such desires. Perhaps this will not be as easy as he thought. 

"She should know that from the letter you sent her," Dr. Lecter informs his daughter. 

Susana makes a dismissive gesture. The doctor finds himself reminded of himself, when Chilton used to enter his cell whilst he was strapped to the hand truck. The little weasel believed that _he _had all the power then, and Dr. Lecter was his helpless pawn. But it had never been so; despite the restraints, the dolly, the orderlies, the riot batons, all of Chilton's little symbols of power – he had held the psychological upper hand. It is a position he is accustomed to having. 

He does not think he has it now. As he studies his daughter's expression, he realizes there is something absent in her face that he is used to seeing in those who know him for what he is. She is not afraid of him. How long has it been since someone who knew what he was did not fear him? 

"That letter was one _you _dictated," she said. "And it wasn't to Amika. It was to Mom. And you knew it all along." Her tone is not accusatory; she seems to be just mentioning a fact. 

"That is all your mother should get for now," he reminds her. "She is still...being punished." 

Susana watches him, still easily calm. Dr. Lecter has understood intellectually the effect of his strange maroon eyes on others, but this is the first time equally disconcerting maroon eyes have ever studied him. 

"I've been thinking about it, and I'm not sure she _should _be punished," Susana says. 

Dr. Lecter's eyes narrow. Over the past few days, he has carefully begun constructing the edifice of her mother's punishment in her mind. He is a master sculptor when it comes to the human mind; he's done it before. Psychological manipulation and chemical control have been his tools for far longer than this girl has been alive. At this point, according to all his encyclopedic knowledge of the human mind, Susana should not have the ability to voice the sentence she just has. 

When Dr. Lecter was in the asylum, the turnkey Dr. Chilton once attempted to drug him in order to find out where a Princeton student was buried. Dr. Lecter had taken great pleasure in giving him a recipe for dip. He had multiple rooms in his memory palace; it was simple to hide in one until the effects of the drugs wore off. 

With Clarice Starling, once, he wondered if he had built better than he knew. Now he wonders if that thought did not refer to the daughter he begat on her. Can she, too, hide away in her mind, proof against his skills? Can she turn the foundation of his psychological structures into sand through the force of her will alone? 

It seems she has inherited more from him than her eyes. 

"_I _feel she should," Dr. Lecter says. "She took you from me." 

"And you have a right to be angry," Susana allows. "Still, do two wrongs make a right? She's already worried sick. You've made your point. Maybe there's _some _kind of reasonable compromise here." 

"There is not," Dr. Lecter says. "There cannot be. She seeks to put me in prison. Do you want that to happen?" 

Susana shakes her head. "Of course not," she says. "But I have to go back to Virginia sometime." 

"I'm afraid not," Dr. Lecter says, and steps forward with the syringe. 

Susana grabs his wrist before he is able to give her the shot. Her hand reminds him of her mother's: small, well fleshed, but strong. She eyes him carefully. 

"You don't have to do that," she says firmly. "What do you have to tell me that you can't say without that?" 

Dr. Lecter blinks, slowly. He is surprised and intrigued. This is the first time in years – decades, perhaps – that he has had an opponent who even came close to matching him. This will be a lot of fun. 

"Susana," he says gently, "you must hear me out." 

"I will," Susana says calmly. "I will hear you out, I promise that. And I don't want you to go to jail. But I will make my decision myself." 

Yes, this will be interesting, he decides. Already he is attempting to alter his strategies. She may have a mind fashioned like his own, but he has the advantage of years of experience. There may be more complexity to her than he thought, but he will win. He _must _win. 

But winning can sometimes involve strategic retreats. Dr. Lecter pockets the syringe and clears his throat. His little girl can think she won this round, just as he once deliberately lost games so that she would be happy. 

All the same, even as he begins to speak, he is observing her and revising his observations. He will make his case, and then he will figure out his next move. Victory _will_ be his. 

...

Clarice Starling is pondering. 

A team of kidnapping specialists were sent off to Buenos Aires a few hours ago. Lloyd Bowman came into her office to tell her. She has no doubt they will do the very best they can. She _does _have a doubt that they are in the right place. 

Buenos Aires was where she lived with Hannibal Lecter for eleven years. They'd had a beach home in Mar del Plata and another house in Bariloche, in the mountains. Dr. Lecter had liked access to expansive nature: the majesty of the mountains and the ocean had been things he took pleasure in At one time, she took pleasure in it with him. At another time, she would've been perfectly happy to destroy all of South America, as it reminded her of her gilded captivity. 

Even the innocent memories can be haunting. At the house in Bariloche she remembers Susana learning to ski. She'd been about six or seven then. Dr. Lecter had insisted on buying her an entire ski outfit, skis, poles, the whole nine yards. She'd looked adorable, Clarice has to admit that. 

She had asked about snowboarding, but Dr. Hannibal Lecter had no intent of _ever _letting his progeny learn something so proletarian as snowboarding. Once Susana had caught the whiff of paternal disapproval she had let it go. Skiing satisfied her. 

They had sent her off with the ski school in the morning and gotten her later. At the time, she had been worried. Skiing was something Clarice didn't know well herself; skiing had been a bit beyond her reach before. _He _knew how to ski, even if he was a bit too old to do it for very long. 

Memories like that trouble her. Not because anything horrible happened, despite a mother's panicked imagination. Dr. Lecter is a monster, cold and cruel. She does not like the reminder than he can mimic a loving father and family man so perfectly. He's doing that now, isn't he? 

The FBI is sending its experts to Buenos Aires. Either Dr. Lecter has crept back there or he has not. Why he would is obvious: there was culture, a high degree of education, all the things he would like. Why he would not was equally obvious: just after she returned to the US with Susana, there were FBI agents crawling all over Buenos Aires. The Argentine government knew he had been there and would be on the lookout for him. 

She was offered the chance to go to Buenos Aires or the smaller team in Asunción. She is torn. As an FBI agent, she always wanted to go where the action was, not to some backwater. The real question for her is this: _is _Buenos Aires where the action is? 

A strong part of her wants to say yes. Dr. Lecter would want to go back to the city; he dearly enjoyed his time there when she was with him. It would be a way for him to taunt his foes, openly living in the same city that they had once hunted him in. Plus, Susana would be able to pick up her old Argentine Spanish pretty easily. 

Yet there is another part of her that reminds her that Dr. Lecter can be conservative, when he feels it is necessary. When it comes to his freedom, he can slink and slide like and shadow. Is he doing that now? 

Bowman's shadow appears in her office, and she turns around to look at him wordlessly. 

"Clarice," he says kindly, "I need to know. Do you want to go?" 

Clarice sighs. "Of course I want to go," she says, trying not to make it a snap. 

"All right," Bowman says. "Where?" 

Clarice sighs again. She knows that both places will be investigated by people who know and care about what they are doing. She isn't egotistical by nature; she knows the value of the people who work with her every day. But she cannot help but shake the idea that it is she who will make the difference between Susana's recovery and her permanent loss. 

A or B. She has to make her choice. For good or for ill, she has to make her choice. And the consequences of that choice...perhaps they _are _what she believes them to be. 

She grits her teeth. 

" Asunción," she says. 


	11. Confidence and Doubts

  


Asunción is a noisy city, just like any other, Clarice thinks. Traffic, hawkers eagerly selling their wares, and all the sounds of city life. Odd that Paraguay is considered calmer than other South American countries. Somehow they can sense she is an American: whether it is by her clothes or her bearing or if they just have American radar she doesn't know. 

Her Spanish has come back pretty well. After living eleven years as Hannibal Lecter's plaything, immersed in Argentine high society, she attained a level of fluency she never thought possible. Over this past decade she has barely used it and it has atrophied. Yet it is coming back. She can understand signs and most of the people who she has to deal with. 

In a way it is funny. At home – in English – she has come to terms with her drawl after years of trying to sound Eastern. She is from West Virginia, and she's a-gonna sound like it and be proud of it, and anyone who doesn't like it can deal. But in Spanish she sounds ever so highbrow. 

Her fluency in Spanish gives her something quite valuable: the ability to go out and investigate on her own. The cultured accent helps, she thinks. People pay more attention to her. 

She is still convinced that Dr. Lecter will have showered her daughter with gifts in order to make her want to stay. The fact that he can do a lot worse to make her stay is not lost on Clarice; she tries to ignore those dark whispers. So she is tracking her daughter's tastes and hoping for the best. 

The hotel concierge was helpful in pointing her to the ritzy stores in Asunción. Electronics, clothes, that sort of thing. The FBI has already tracked down Dr. Lecter's shopping trip in Buenos Aires, where he bought Susana an entire wardrobe of clothes. That stirs up a few memories for Clarice that she would rather forget: her own days spent shopping for clothes at those same swanky places. She remembers buying Susana clothes there as a little girl. Back then, Susana had a taste for laces and frills. Fortunately, she grew out of it. 

But for now, Clarice is suspecting electronics is the way to go. Dr. Lecter could buy her a ton of clothes in Buenos Aires; that was no problem. Buy a couple of suitcases and presto. Electronics are a different matter. Susana would want a computer, a stereo, a TV – lots of stuff. Dr. Lecter is unlikely to say no to her. He never did in the past; Susana would express interest in something and presto, he would buy it for her. 

The thought of that is disconcerting, in a way. Dr. Lecter had done horrible, mind-bendingly evil things in his life. He had served up human organs to his guests. He had executed Pazzi in an exceptionally cruel way. He had bent and warped her mind and made her into his Barbie doll. To think of how he had spoiled Susana reminds her of the unselfconscious glee he took in doing so, of the clear pleasure that seeing his daughter happy gave him, and that in turn reminds her unpleasantly that he did, in his own way, love Susana dearly. 

_Quit it. He is not some loving daddy. He isn't anything like Daddy. He is an exceptionally dangerous man and he'll brainwash her into staying if he hasn't already. _

__After quashing her doubts, Clarice steps from the taxi and looks up and down the street. There is a big electronics shop that is rumored to be the best in the city. She doesn't know enough about Paraguayan prices to tell if it is – 'best' to Clarice means the lowest price, but he took a certain glee in the ability to be indifferent to price. It looks like the sort of place where the clerks will fawn all over you if you come in with a big old wad of cash, and that is what she thinks will draw him. 

There is something more: a psychic scent, a hunch, whatever you want to call it. As Clarice steps into the store, the idea that her daughter and Dr. Lecter have been in this store grabs a hold of the back of her brain and holds on with strong but soft paws. She can sense her daughter's presence here somehow. 

A clerk walks up to her and smiles pleasantly. "Can I help you?" he asks. Clarice blinks. The Paraguayan accent is easily comprehensible but is different from what she is used to. 

"Yes," Clarice says, and reaches for her ID. "My name is Clarice Starkey, and I am with the FBI."

For a moment she blinks. Her pseudonym is something she has gotten used to over the years. Part of the price she'd had to pay for her safety from Hannibal Lecter was giving up the name _Clarice Starling _in favor of the more anonymous _Claire Starkey. _

_It's nothing. It's just jet lag. _

The clerk's eyebrow raises. "Is there a problem?" This must look odd, Clarice thinks. An American FBI agent in Paraguay with an Argentine accent. 

"I'm looking for a girl," Clarice says, and takes Susana's school picture out of her blazer pocket. "I believe she may be here in Asunción with her kidnapper. Can you tell me if she's been in here? Have you ever seen her before?" 

Recognition lights up in the clerk's face. A bolt of pure savage joy bolts through Clarice. She was _right. _Susana is here, in Asunción. She will have to call and get Bowman to send the troops here. But in the meantime, she is on the right track. 

_"Ojos marrònes," _the clerk muses. 

"_Sì, ojos marròne_s," Clarice repeats. "So she was here?" 

The clerk nods. "A few days ago, yes. With an older gentleman," he says. "I thought at first he was her grandfather, but she called him 'papa'. They bought a great deal of merchandise." 

"The best?" Clarice asks, grinning tightly. 

"Yes. Quite expensive. Everything they bought was top of the line. Is there something wrong?" 

_Bing fucking go._

Clarice shakes her head. "No," she says. "Did they leave an address? Or did they have anything delivered?" 

The clerk shakes his head, and Clarice's joy falls into icy shards for a moment. "I'm afraid not," he says mournfully. "They paid cash and had a van. We assisted them in getting everything out to the car. They said they could handle the rest themselves." 

That matches up with what Clarice knows of her daughter. Dr. Lecter himself may be aged and not as strong as he used to be, but he may still be surprisingly strong. Susana has always been far stronger than one would expect for her size and weight. 

"Did you happen to see a license plate?" 

"I'm sorry, no," the clerk says. 

_Goddammit. But she's here. That's what I need to know. Now if we get the FBI's kidnapping experts here...._

__A doubt strikes her. Dr. Lecter has remained free for four decades now. His senses are sharp and his knowledge of his enemies acute and detailed. If they send the FBI's kidnapping experts here, is there some w ay he can find out? Some little clerk in a police department or embassy somewhere, some little nobody who will know they are coming and mention it in passing? Some article on the FBI's website, or some other way he can sense the approach of his hunters? 

Clarice takes out a card and scribbles her hotel's phone number on it. "If they should come back here, could you call me, please?" 

"Of course," the clerk says. He takes the card and places it in his shirt pocket. Clarice takes a moment to think. 

_Okay. Susana is in Asunción. **He **is in Asunción. _Already her mind begins to sift this knowledge through her existing knowledge of the dark psychiatrist. _That means he'll be living in the fancy areas, he'll want to go to the opera and classical music, and he'll want to show her that. Not too much because she'll get bored with it. She's going to want to play on the Internet and she'll want things like music CD's and horror movies – both of which will probably drive him crazy. But I know her, and I know him, and between the two of those I should be able to figure out where they are. _

__Clarice Starling hits the street with a newfound confidence. It won't be long.

...

Dr. Hannibal Lecter sits in his office and ponders the issues before him. He is alone; Susana is in her room listening to music. Both of them are waiting for the chef to announce that dinner is ready. 

He does not know yet that his former mate is in the city he calls home. He is otherwise occupied. His daughter is taking up most of his time. He has to strike a balance. 

Throughout his life, the doctor has held most of his fellow humans in contempt. He knew all too well that he was far more intelligent than most of the stupid sheep who walked the earth with him. He knew also that the yoke of morality that confined so many of them had no restraint on his behavior. 

Principles are all well and good to have, but Dr. Lecter knows the weak basis most of them are based on. Someone might claim to hold a particular value as sacrosanct, worth giving up one's very life for. He knows better. It is easy for a fat and happy man to claim to love individual freedom. Take that fat man, control his food intake, shut him off from the sun in a small cell, administer the right series of drugs and ask the right questions, and within six months that very man will proclaim fascism to be the greatest gift humankind has ever known. 

How could he not have contempt for his fellows? He knows perfectly well how malleable and weak they truly are. He can change everything that they are if so he chooses. 

His daughter's unexpected resilience has brought him to a place he did not expect. He had thought that her years in the normative world had rendered her just like the rest. Apparently his biological gift to her has not gone wasted. Somehow, she can shelter herself in her own mind from his probes. 

Yet she cannot last against him if he chooses not to pull his punches. In the end, he can control her if he chooses. He could simply lock her in a room, deprive her of outside stimulation, strictly control her access to food, keep her awake at night. Her cherished principles would be like anyone else's: once sleep deprivation fogs the brain and blood sugar drops to low levels, she would crawl like anyone else. 

That option remains open to him. The thought of it makes him quail, and that is something he is unfamiliar with. He can appreciate the idea of it intellectually: the methods are crude, but they do work. When he began his practice of psychiatry, he had betrayed a certain interest in the work of Chinese and North Korean brainwashing; there was a certain frank amorality in molding the minds of others that appealed to him. He had occasionally performed his own experiments, usually on victims who were destined to end up in a soup pot anyway. When one's fate is to be served up with some caviar, what difference does it make if one professes to love communism? He had wanted to satisfy his curiosity, and so he had. For his own idle amusement he had made a few of his victims chant slogans about the motherland in the hours before their deaths. It had been droll then. All the same, those victims had served far better in goulash. 

Yet something holds him back. The thought of making his daughter suffer so makes him tremble. He, who has ignored begging and disregarded tearful pleas, he who has never allowed the suffering of others to stop his plans. The thought of confining and isolating her, knowing she would suffer, is something he quails at, and he cannot remember the last time he quailed. There is an interesting paradox in it: he understands intellectually why – she is his daughter – but compassion has been alien to his nature for so very long he does not quite know how to integrate the feeling into his life. 

Clarice Starling once asked him many years ago if he was afraid to point his high-powered perception at himself. The answer to that question is the same as it was then: no. He is not afraid to look into himself. The limitations of compassion for his daughter are something he will accept, just as a rook must accept that it cannot move diagonally on the chessboard. He will have to find a way around this unexpected roadblock. 

There are two examples he can draw from his own past. Dr. Chilton had, admittedly, a few successes in his petty tyranny. Never over him, but other inmates were weaker and gave in to the administrator's dictates. Dr. Lecter had privately held him in contempt for both his failure and his weakness. Chilton had been the king of half-measures, waving small clubs because he lacked the inner strength to wield larger ones. Dr. Lecter remained in his cell but had access to the media. And why? Because the court said he could? Had Chilton the stomach to run his own asylum the way Dr. Lecter would have, it was entirely possible that eventually he might have won. Dr. Lecter could look at himself realistically – his reserves of intelligence and strength were strong, but he was loathe to say they might be inexhaustible. Holding an overly arrogant opinion of himself was not good; he could delude himself. He might have his limits like any other man, even if those limits were far beyond those of others. 

But no, Chilton was an animal like all the rest, and he would roll over and expose the back of the neck when a bigger dog came calling. He satisfied himself with petty torments and did not have the stomach for larger ones. As a practitioner of what others called evil himself, Dr. Lecter had little respect for a man like that. Chilton attempted to use his petty evils to puff himself up and make himself look bigger than he was. 

Had Dr. Lecter been in his shoes, a troublesome inmate such as he had once been would have been simply killed or lobotomized, either with a scalpel or chemically. That would have taken care of the problem much more effectively and cleanly. There were times he had wanted to tell that to Clarice, to answer her question on his perception of himself. 

Barney, on the other hand, earned vastly more respect for Dr. Lecter. He could be cold when the situation demanded coldness – he had held Dr. Lecter's mail plenty of times. So long as Dr. Lecter behaved himself he received everything he was entitled to. Barney worked within the system, which marked him down a hair or two in Dr. Lecter's eyes. There were times Dr. Lecter thought Barney too patient, too willing to give second chances. All the same, there was a fundamental simplicity and truth in the large black orderly that was completely absent from his supervisor. Barney could not order drugs or a lobotomy, but he did not tremble at the thought of using any of the options open to him. Chilton wanted to be a bully but did not have the intestinal fortitude to complete the transaction. Barney did not want to be a bully, and his actions flowed from that truth. Dr. Lecter can respect a man who chooses not to play far more easily than he can respect a man who plays and plays badly. 

He can try to ratchet things up just a bit, increasing the dosages of the drugs he gives her, keeping her under longer, cutting her access to the sugary sweets she likes so well, and seeing if that builds a stronger foundation. But to ignore what is in front of him is not bright either; he must see things as they are rather than how he wishes them to be. It is the doctor's belief that hypnosis does not appear to work on Susana just as it did not work on him; the effect holds for a few days and then washes away as a sand castle would. He had hoped to treat her with the least intrusive methods. 

Yet now things are different: he does not think that more of the same will help, and he knows that he cannot move to the harshest methods. This leaves him with the unpleasant choice of using half-measures because he cannot bear the thought of full measures. In other words, emulate Chilton. 

Is there another way, perhaps? He had grown to respect Barney in a way he never would have granted to Chilton. Are there lessons he can draw from the orderly's example? Perhaps there is. At the minimum, he can buy some time to reassess her personality and what weak points she may have. And she must have weak points _somewhere. _Chilton's weak points were glaringly apparent. Barney had his weak points as well. Boyle, Pembry, Mason, Pazzi...even Clarice. He has overcome them all in the end. 

Dr. Lecter does not know if this will work to accomplish his goal, but at the least it will work to buy some time. He can be very convincing without the need of chemical agents. All she needs is to see things the way he does. He lets his mind play over how he must present things: how her mother hurt him so dreadfully, and how there is no way that she can safely return to the United States without subjecting him to grave risk. Besides, he is an old man, and he does not have many years left to him. If he lives another decade it will be remarkable. 

None of this is falsehood, and the doctor knows how to package it. Clarice has raised her alone; the concept of the lambs will be strong in her mind if not the image itself. Eventually, too, there are his other tricks: she is separated from her mother, and so long as Clarice is on the other side of the world the advantage is his. It is said that the opposite of love is not hate but apathy, and if he can keep Susana separated from her mother long enough, apathy may weaken the bonds between mother and daughter just as the bonds between father and daughter strengthen. 

Will she see through the bars of his plight and ache for him? He hopes that she will. Perhaps he was too hasty with moving to stronger therapies. Perhaps he should try to gain her confidence more and _then _move to them. After all, he can restart them if he judges they will do more good than harm. It is not lost on him that he has vacillated more on how to get his daughter to stay with him than he has vacillated on any subject for _decades. _ Does that mean anything? 

_Merely that it is vital that she stay, _Dr. Lecter thinks, and pauses. There is some way to make her comply with his wishes: drugs and hypnosis, appealing to her sympathies, spoiling her. There are other, darker ways, but Dr. Lecter does not wish to use them. Neither does he wish to find out if his self-control is so absolute as to allow him to overcome those if he must. 

The chef contacts him on the intercom, informing him that dinner is ready. Dr. Lecter rises and walks slowly to his daughter's room. Knocking on the door, he waits for a moment. 

"One moment," Susana says from behind the door. A moment later she is at her door. He observes her for a moment. No dress – she seems to have a marked dislike for dresses now, compared to when she was young. In lieu of jeans, though, she wears a nice blouse and dress slacks. Dr. Lecter finds himself unreasonably pleased by that. 

"Dinner is ready," he says gently. 

"All right," she says, and glances down at the staircase. This mansion is larger than any other house she has lived in, with the possible exception of the mansion in Buenos Aires. Together they walk down the stairs to the dining room. The butler will have set the table already. 

He takes a deep breath and feels his confidence return. This is merely a moment's doubt . In his time he has convinced people to do far worse than to stay in his home and lead a charmed life. Somehow or another, he will find the right combination. 

She will stay with him. She _must. _

__


	12. Of the Heart

  


They are near but not seen. It is frustrating. Clarice can sense their presence somehow, like some sort of fucking Jedi Mind Trick. Her daughter's vivacious energy; Dr. Lecter's dark presence. They are somewhere here, in this city. 

Have they fled? Clarice doesn't think so, although the idea disturbs her. The FBI has been extremely quiet in bringing their teams to Asunción. No announcement in the papers to alert their prey. Susana's face has been kept off Paraguayan milk cartons, if they do that here. 

What they have done is liase with the Paraguayan authorities. It has been very quiet and very high-level. The FBI has good sleuths; the Paraguayan police know the area. She feels tautly good: the hunter has spotted the tracks of her prey. 

She is in another meeting room, much like the one in Quantico where they first tracked Susana's flight to the continent of her birth. A few uniformed Paraguayan boys are around, and on the board is a map of Asunción. Certain sections of the city are highlighted: the wealthy areas. Clarice eyes it carefully. 

_**That **is where you are, _she thinks. _You're not as smart as you think, doctor. You won't deny yourself the upper-crust life. No matter what city you move to, no matter what country, you always settle in the glitzy areas. You did it in Florence, you did it in Maryland, you did it in Buenos Aires, and I bet you're doing it here. No single-story little bungalow for you; you've got yourself a fancy old mansion with a fancy car parked out front. _

__The Paraguayans have Susana's picture, and their police force is out looking for her. Clarice closes her eyes and thinks for a moment. This is like the hunt for a serial killer, and for Clarice it has always been a see-saw. 

In the beginning of a hunt, there is no luck for the hunters, as Clarice knows it. Their prey has been sharpening his ability to stay hidden and not be captured. They are thrown into the hunt without a good knowledge of who they are hunting. The first few days or weeks of a hunt can be exceptionally trying and frustrating, as the bodies are found but the hunters are still trying to find what they can. Their asses are in the dirt, as Clarice thinks of it in her blunt manner. 

Slowly but surely, though, momentum builds. The hunters pass the fulcrum, and the see-saw swings. The killer begins to panic or make mistakes, and then, all of a sudden, _kaboom. _The hunters are on top and it's the killer's ass in the dirt. 

She is feeling better than she was; the fulcrum is swinging. "Good" is not the way to put it, though. She will feel good when she is reunited with her daughter, safe and sound. 

As some uniformed Paraguayan cop with lots of gold brain on his sleeves drones in accented English, she finds her mind wandering. Questions tumble through her mind. What had Susana been thinking? Didn't she realize what her father was? How could she have made Clarice suffer like this? 

What is she going to say to her daughter when she is recovered? 

For now, what matters is recovering her daughter, safe and sound. What will Clarice say? _What the fuck were you thinking _is a phrase that comes handily to mind. But no. Susana had been confused. Her father had played his hand well, first dislodging her from her normal life in Virginia, then waving the chance under her nose. 

_Do you realize how worried I've been? _That is another one. It's a fairer question, and one that worries Clarice herself. _Does _Susana realize how worried Clarice has been? She would have normally. But Clarice knows all too well who Susana is currently with. It is entirely possible by now that she doesn't understand how worried Clarice is. Clarice is all too familiar with Dr. Lecter's ability to fog and confuse minds. 

She forces herself to abandon that. For the time being she has to think positive. Susana is in this city. Susana will be found. She will see her daughter again. Maybe Susana will need counseling, after what she has been through. Maybe even psychiatric hospitalization. But Clarice will be there by her side. She will help her daughter get through this. 

The Paraguayan officer's accented tones are droning but soothing. She has to fight to make herself pay attention until he says something that catches her attention right off. 

"The best mansions in the city are along Mariscal Lopez Avenue," he said. "In fact, the American embassy is on that street." He smiles like a tour guide. 

Clarice doesn't give a rat's ass where the fucking American embassy is; the brass will know that if she needs it. The best mansions? That's more interesting. That sounds like him. How likely is it that he's living in the squalor and slums? Not fucking very. 

"We are running a list of the known driver's license and tax receipts addresses on Mariscal Lopez Avenue at the moment," the officer continues. Clarice blinks before understanding what he means. "We will cross-reference these with what we know about Dr. Lecter. According to your files, we know he was in Buenos Aires eleven years ago. Therefore we are looking for a man between seventy and eighty years of age who has purchased the house within the past eleven years." 

Clarice feels her stomach tense. Shit, if they let her at a computer keyboard she could have that in...ohh...five minutes. The thought that she might be reunited with her daughter in less than an hour is intoxicatingly powerful. Her short nails dig into her palms in anticipation. 

"When do you think you'll have that run down?" she asks. 

The policeman looks at her and smiles politely, as if she has spoken out of turn. She stares at him without remorse. If he has a problem, he can deal. This is her _daughter. _

"We have people looking through the files now," he says calmly. "We anticipate having a match by tonight or perhaps tomorrow morning." 

Frustration grasps her stomach. _My daughter is in the hands of a highly intelligent, highly amoral sociopath, buddy. '__Mañana' doesn't cut it. _"I'd be happy to help," she says, trying to keep the impatience from her tone. "I have quite a bit of skill with databases." 

The cop dips his head politely. "Ma'am, I assure you we are working as fast as we can." He draws himself up with exaggerated dignity. "We are a poor country, not like the United States. I am sure in the United States policemen need only press a button and everything pops out of the computer. Here in Paraguay it is not so. But we will do the very best that we can, I assure you. The government of Paraguay favors the rule of law and order and we will ensure that your daughter is safely returned to you." 

Clarice sighs. Apparently he knows who she is. All the same, what does he think she ought to do in the meantime? Knit? "I still want to help," she says. "Sir...I mean no disrespect, to you or to your country. But this is _my daughter." _

__The policeman nods. "And we will do everything that we can." His voice is smooth and inarguable. Clarice sighs. Her hands twitch. Through the rest of the meeting she has to fight the urge to get up, go to wherever the search for Dr. Lecter is taking place, and get those people _moving. _She rescued Catherine Martin single-handedly as a young woman in her twenties; why do they need all afternoon to get a list of all the old men on _one goddam street? _

She does not want to sit here. She wants to hunt. Hunting is what she is made to do. She wants to be outside, eyes alert for the predator's form, nose alert for his scent, looking to pick up the trail. Sitting in her chair is torture. They are _here _somewhere and she knows it, and sitting looking at a fucking whiteboard and a man in a fancy uniform is _not _going to help find Susana and Dr. Lecter. 

The meeting breaks up, and Clarice proceeds out to grab something to eat. She goes to a nearby restaurant that has tables outside. Somehow, she is illogically convinced that Susana and Dr. Lecter will stroll by and she can see them. Part of her knows better: Dr. Lecter would never walk by a police station if he could possibly avoid it. 

Clarice will wait because she has no choice. She cannot antagonize the Paraguayans; they know the city and she doesn't. All the same, she cannot help but champ at the bit; as soon as they have a list she can get to hunting. 

The urge to simply run around herself and check things out is there, but she is wary of wasting her time – or worse, tipping Dr. Lecter off to her presence. If _that _happens, then God only knows where he will go. There are plenty of cities in South America he can hide in. For that matter he can probably make it into Europe without any problem at all. He has the identities and the money to smooth his way. 

For now she will wait – with extreme ill grace and trembling muscles, but she will wait. Once she has the opportunity to hunt, she will hunt. _Please find something soon, _she thinks to herself as she sips at her coffee. 

It may not be now...but it will be soon.

...

Dinner is very good, but that is not a surprise to Dr. Lecter. His chef is first-rate by any standard. His chef knows his epicurean tastes and how to please them. He does; Dr. Lecter firmly believes that his chef has richly earned every dollar Dr. Lecter pays him. 

The butler brings covered plates out to the table at which he sits. His daughter sits across from him, looking at the butler with good-humored disbelief. He serves the foot silently and with aplomb. 

Susana eyes the dish before her. "What is this?" she asks. 

The butler is expressionless as ever. "Citrus glazed fillet of beef carpaccio with boursin cheese, madam." 

She pokes at it with a fork quizzically. "Gesundheit," she says with a grin. Dr. Lecter turns his head once to express his disapproval quietly. Unabashed, Susana offers a quick apology as the wine is served. She glances down at her wineglass and then at him, wordlessly suspecting there is more than wine. Not this time. He will speak to her normally, one on one. 

"The wine is quite good, and pure, you will find," Dr. Lecter says, answering her question without the need to admit what he has already done. 

She doesn't answer him directly, but takes a small sip of the wine to test it. Dr. Lecter smiles calmly. The fillet is excellent, and they eat over small talk. After the meal comes dessert and coffee. Only once that is finished and the clank of fine silverware against equally fine china does the discussion turn to deeper matters. 

"So," Susana says, as if gathering her courage. "So, why is it that I can't even talk to my mother?" 

Dr. Lecter observes her carefully. She is nervous but resolute; frightened but not a coward. Still she presses her point. It is not surprising, he thinks. She _is _much like her mother. 

He makes a gesture. "Let us speak honestly, Susana. You wish to talk to your mother to arrange your journey back to Virginia." 

Susana's jaw tenses. She shrugs. "Well," she says easily, "I _do _have to go back sometime." 

He stops, a bit disappointed. Is she _so _caught up in the petty-bourgeois world that she cannot see the path he is offering her? She is _his. _The only child fate has seen fit to give him. He had never thought that fatherhood would be an experience that would be his. Losing her and Clarice at the same time had hurt him a great deal. Losing her again is...unthinkable. 

"Actually, you do not," Dr. Lecter corrects her, although he takes pains to keep his tone gentle. "If it is education you are concerned about, I assure you I can make arrangements." 

Susana stops and raises an eyebrow uncertainly. "You want me to go to school here in Paraguay?" she asks. From her tone it is obvious that she doesn't think much of the idea. 

"Yes," he affirms. "Perhaps you think that Paraguayan schools are not of sufficient caliber. I assure you that is not necessarily so. There are poor schools here, just as there are in the United States. However, wherever there are very wealthy people, my dear, there are excellent schools willing to cater to their scion. I can ensure that you receive a first-class education anywhere we may wish to settle. There is no need to stick specifically to Asunción; I have lived in many cities over the years, and I can pack up and move one more time." 

She stops and stares down into her coffee. "But...Mom is going to be going _crazy. _I can't just _leave _her." 

Dr. Lecter pauses to mull. This was where he had sought to use drugs to give her a soft landing. It was difficult to realize and accept. But she was made of stronger stuff than he had thought. That should not have surprised him; she was, after all, his daughter. 

"Your mother just took you and left me," he points out. "Did you not think I suffered? I loved both your mother and yourself very deeply. To have you wrenched away from me and taken back to Washington, DC, where I could not follow was worse than being stabbed." 

She bites her lip. Therein lies his one true claim to sympathy: she may not approve of his cuisine or his past hobbies, but she cannot argue that he did not suffer. "Two wrongs don't make a right," she offers. 

"Two wrongs? I daresay your mother performed two wrongs herself. She deprived me of my wife and daughter...and she deprived _you _of your father. Do you know the statistics for girls who do not have their fathers in their lives? I can show you if you like. They suffer. _You _suffered. Needlessly." 

She opens her mouth but does not speak; Dr. Lecter believes he has found a chink in her armor. Perhaps she will cry; perhaps she will still object. But he is strong enough to carry this through. And perhaps, like her mother, she can be changed for the better. 

"Yes...," he says, comfortably aware that he has the psychological upper hand. "_You _suffered too, did you not? You wanted your father; what child would not?" His maroon eyes hold hers. "Eventually you adjusted to it. But at first it was hard, was it not?" 

She nods and her mouth quirks. 

"Tell me," Dr. Lecter says invitingly. 

She pauses and watches him just as carefully. She is trying to gauge him somehow. Is she going to make something up? He doesn't believe so. 

"Why do you want to know?" she asks. 

"Talking about these sorts of things helps," he says, his tone wonderfully gentle. "I assure you, Susana, you know of my worst cases with my patients. But I helped many, many more than those whose therapy was going nowhere." 

"I...I don't like thinking about it," Susana confesses. "It's stuff I hadn't thought about for years." 

Dr. Lecter shrugs. "Do you not remember?" 

Susana shakes her head and her eyes are flat on his. "I remember everything," she says. "I always have." 

Dr. Lecter closes his eyes. He should not be surprised that she has a phenomenal recall; after all, so does he. For his own pleasure, he summons Susana at age two, beaming at him when she saw him. He opens them again and hears Raspail's whiny voice in the back of his mind for a moment, discussing Jame Gumb, long before he had even _met _the woman who provided this girl's other half. The chain of consequences: Raspail killed by Jame Gumb, Clarice seeking Jame Gumb, Clarice visiting him, he giving her Raspail, he giving her Jame Gumb, Verger seeking him, she seeking to save him from Verger, he freeing her from her demons, he begetting Susana on her. 

The chain has a few dark links Dr. Lecter does not like to follow: Clarice awakening, Clarice fleeing with Susana. The most recent links are more to the doctor's liking. 

"Tell me," he presses. 

Susana sighs. "When I was little," she says, and her fingers tense on the coffee cup. "We'd just gotten to the US. They put us in this suite. Mrs. Bridell came back and was all huggy with Mom. I didn't get it. Everybody was speaking English and I could understand it but I was having trouble because it wasn't my first language. Every night I would ask her when you were coming. She just...," her voice trails off. 

"She just kept saying that you weren't coming. She tried to explain it to me, I guess. She said that you had been bad to her, that you...you were bad for us, and that we would be free in America. She kept saying that. 'We're free now, you and me.' I didn't understand it, or her. I just wanted my papa. What were we in Argentina, slaves?" 

Dr. Lecter watches her carefully. Good. Perhaps all the drugs and hypnosis are unnecessary after all. If he can tap into that old pain, perhaps he can convince her of the rightness of his position. A brief pain strikes his chest and he has to pause for a moment until it goes away. 

"Not at all," he says, and smiles. "Susana, I know you feel for your mother's pain. Can you perhaps feel for mine? I am eighty-two. I shall not live forever. Eleven more years is unlikely." 

"I know...but still," she says. "She's got to be going _crazy. _She's going to look for us, too. That's what she does. She's a hunter." 

For a moment Dr. Lecter must shake his head. Is that pain returning? "Susana, in my time I hav evaded not only your mother, but Jack Crawford himself." 

Susana looks vague. "Who's Jack Crawford?" 

_I am **so **very grateful to hear those words from your lips, my daughter, _Dr. Lecter thinks, and allows himself a wry grin. "The former head of Behavioral Sciences," he explains. 

"Before Lloyd Bowman?" Susana seems to prefer discussing FBI personnel changes. That makes sense. He can keep the pressure up when it is necessary, but for now he can let her have some respite. 

"Yes. Mr. Bowman has worked his way up the ladder quite well. At one time, he was merely an evidence technician." Dr. Lecter smiles coolly, letting his mind drift back. Ah, that fan letter from Francis Dolarhyde. 

She sips at her coffee and appears doubtful. For a few minutes, tense silence rules the room. The servants know better than to interfere. 

"Look," she says, "what about...what about my life? I mean, never seeing Mom again just doesn't...doesn't...," 

"I am not saying you can _never _see her again," Dr. Lecter says. "But you cannot simply get on a plane and go back. You know perfectly well that your mother would like nothing better than to see me recaptured. Besides...you are _my _daughter. I can help you best to live the life you _deserve _to have." He gestures at the grand surroundings. "Much fine than your mother's home in Virginia, is it not? I have sufficient monies available to sustain myself in this style for the rest of my life...and enough to sustain _you _in this style for the rest of yours. Your mother threw all that away to return to her fruitless attempt to save the lambs. You need not follow her example. Even in the United States my fortune would make you very wealthy for the rest of your life. I won't be around forever, Susana. There is no one more fitting to inherit my riches than you." 

Is she tempted? It is hard to tell. His chest aches for a moment. The pain is strong enough that it is hard to will away.

He reaches forward and takes her left hand gently, parting her middle and ring fingers. There is the echo of his own scar. Hers is much more circumspect and harder to see, but it is there. 

"Your hand. You had six fingers once, as did I. Your eyes. Surely you must know by now that you are not like others. You and I are of a blood. We are something..._other _that the sheep who populate this world. Other and greater." 

She bites her lip and looks unconvinced and distressed. "But...," she says and trails off, unable to put her objection into words. 

"Your mother kept you from me for eleven years," Dr. Lecter says gently but irrevocably. "Think of the pain that caused me. And the pain it caused _you, _you're certainly entitled to it. I am an elderly man, Susana. I lost my sister as a young boy. She was killed. I lost your mother as well; she left me and took you away from me. You are my last chance. Do you really think it meet that I should die alone and abandoned?" 

Tears glisten in her eyes at those words, and Dr. Lecter realizes with some glee that she is slowly being dragged towards the inescapable conclusion. The psychological weight on her shoulders is hard to bear. To see her traumatized pains him, but it is necessary until she accepts that her place is with him. 

Very softly, barely above a whisper, he speaks the words aloud so that they both can hear them. "Your place is with me." 

Susana lets out what might have been a sob and nods slowly. 

"Okay," she says miserably. 

This is Dr. Lecter's moment of victory; he should be happy. Perhaps 'okay' does not mean what he believes it to mean, but most likely it does. There will be further work ahead, but she has accepted her fate. 

It is not so much that Dr. Lecter is not happy; he is. But the pain suddenly returns, stronger and sharper and before. The weight on his chest is incredible. It is as if Barney, along with a few of his orderlies, has jumped on his chest all at once. His medical knowledge floods back into him, and he knows what is happening. He clamps his right hand to his chest and gasps. The agony is exquisite. 

Susana knows something is wrong but not what. Her eyes widen and she looks at him with alarm. Her hands press his shoulders. 

"Papa? Papa, are you all right?" 

Dr. Lecter clamps his eyes shut and opens them again. It takes a superhuman effort to speak, and he is able to gasp out one word. 

"No...," 

  



	13. Through the Night

  


The waiting is _maddening. _

__In the US, Clarice could've had this list in a few minutes. They could've been out and searching hours ago. With luck, Dr. Lecter would've already been in a cell and Susana could have already been reunited with her mother. But not here. Probably not tonight, so they said at five o'clock. Goddam. 

Clarice Starling sits in her hotel room, watching TV and trying to dampen down her rage. It is like rubbing her skin with sandpaper. The Paraguayans are trying, sure enough. They have people going through the list, trying to cross off suspects. '_We don't want to have too many false positives' _was what they said. _False positives be damned, _Clarice thinks. _So what if we inconvenience a few goddam people. I want my daughter. _

__But this is a wealthy area, and heaven forbid wealthy people be inconvenienced by the police. Clarice finds herself thinking of the long-ago mayor in his Navy surplus shoes, taking back her father's star. Her resentment towards the Paraguayan authorities is colored the same. Don't they want the US to be happy with them? All they need to do is see if Dr. Lecter is there. If it's not Dr. Lecter, Clarice doesn't care who it is. 

But no, she is not in command here, damn it all. Bowman is coordinating, but the FBI and all its skilled people are guests, and guests may not demand things. Clarice is toying with searching for her daughter herself. Go up and down that avenue – Mariscal Lopez, she thinks it was – and pretend to be collecting for a charity. Odds are that Dr. Lecter will have a butler. He did in Buenos Aires. In the place where the man of the house refuses to come to the door....

Even so, she is nervous to take that route. Dr. Lecter is wily and cunning; she knows that _very _well. If the butler has been given her picture, or even if Dr. Lecter sees her coming, she wants the police behind her. He had escape plans in place in Argentina. He will here, too. She wants a trained SWAT team behind her to cut off his exits. At this point, Susana is probably so brainwashed she'll run with him. 

Waiting is the best option, but it's only because the others are worse. She'll do it because she is afraid of tipping him off. But she doesn't have to like it and she doesn't have to take it with grace. 

Trying to get her mind off the maddening wait, Clarice tries to think about what will happen next. What will she do when Susana is safe? Getting her back to the United States will be easy. Susana has American citizenship and a quick trip to the embassy will get her a passport. After that? Well, she'll have to see. If she has to take some time off to put her daughter's mind back together, she can do that. If she has to put Susana in a hospital somewhere, with trained psychiatrists to undo what Dr. Lecter has undoubtedly done, she can do that, too. She is strong enough to be her daughter's rock.

Watching TV does not serve to alleviate her aggravation. Neither does the radio. All she can do is glare at the clock for not being morning. The authorities have promised they will have a name no later than 9 AM tomorrow. The FBI has been exceptionally quiet in entering Paraguay. There have been no news articles or press releases. She wants it that way. 

What about Dr. Lecter? Does she have anything to say to the man who stole eleven years of her life? She is not sure. _You're under arrest, you have the right to remain silent, _is all she _knows _she can tell him. Will she say any more? It depends on what he has done to her daughter. 

_Tick, tick, tick. _The clock is maddeningly slow. The phone refuses to ring. She stares at it as if she can make the telephone ring and have it be the Paraguayan boys with a list through sheer force of will. Waiting like this is maddening. 

Tomorrow. It will be tomorrow. She will have her daughter back in her arms tomorrow. 

...

  


Susana is exhausted.

She has been here for hours. The beeping of the machines, the murmurs of passing people in the hallway that she can only imperfectly understand, and the smell of disinfectant all merge together in her mind. She has been afraid to leave, staying through the night. Early morning will be soon, but it is still dark outside. It suits her mood. 

She has been sitting here in this chair for hours, by her father's bedside. He looks smaller and frailer, weakened by his ordeal. The new drugs and surgical procedures that they performed here saved his life but appear to have taken something from him. 

He does not like the situation. Not one bit. She can tell. He resents the helplessness and dependence. Only back in the asylum was Hannibal Lecter dependent on anyone, and then only unwillingly. She suspects that he wants his own pajamas rather than the hospital johnny they had given him. Normally she would be happy to get them for him, but she is frankly afraid to leave him. Such a chilling reminder of his mortality has not gone ignored. 

She is tired and hungry, but she does not want to sleep or eat. There is an obligation to see him through this. He would tell her to go back home. In fact, he did do just that a few hours ago before he finally fell asleep. 

But she is loath to. What if it happens again? She knows that they will help him here. She knows there is nothing further she can do for him that the doctors cannot. The sensible thing to do is to go home and get some sleep. 

She sits and watches the snake of green light hump up and down in sync with her father's heartbeat. It looks regular to her layman's eyes. Her father's face is calm as he sleeps. She watches him carefully, keeping her vigil, too tired to know why she is keeping it. 

One thing has changed, irrevocably and completely. She cannot consider going back to her mother. Not now. Not now that he needs her, now that death has brushed so close against him with its cold black wings. For now she must swallow her doubts. The thought of her mother suffering still does not please her, but her mother is alive and strong. Her father is alive for now, and that is all that can be said for him. She has made her decision for now. She is not completely comfortable with it and doubts she ever will be. There will be time to mend ties with her mother later, if her mother is so inclined. For now she must stand behind her father. 

Her father stirs in the bed and stares at her curiously. He sits up and reaches for the oxygen prongs stuck into his nostrils. With a careful dignity he tweezes them free. Dr. Lecter may have been weakened, but his dignity remains strong as ever. 

"Susana, it is two o'clock in the morning. You should go home. Get some sleep." His voice is calm. 

Susana blinks for a moment and tries to focus on him. Everything seems to be floating on a sea of shock and it is hard to concentrate. She feels empty and tired and lost. 

"I....I, um...," she begins, and trails off. What _is _she supposed to say? _What if you die before I get back? _That thought keeps dancing in the back of her mind, but she doesn't think he wants to hear it. 

"I assure you I'll be all right. Go home and go to sleep. The cook can provide much better fare than the hospital cafeteria will." He speaks quite gently and calmly, as if nothing untoward has happened. The fact that he is here in a cardiac care unit belies that. 

She _is _tired, and the thought of her own bed is quite welcome. All the same, she cannot help but feel a duty to stay by him. He needs her. He might want her to go home and sleep, but he needs her. She cannot turn away from him any more than her mother could have turned away from her lambs. 

"Okay," she says, still thinking confusedly that she ought to stay. Or do something for him. She blinks at him and reaches for her purse. She drove him to the hospital earlier. Can she remember the way back home? Oh well, she also has his cell phone, and she can call and ask the butler for directions. 

"Do you want anything?" she asks, and rubs at her eyes. "Pajamas or anything?" 

Dr. Lecter appears to consider that. "My own pajamas would be preferable to this," he says, and indicates the hospital johnny with some distaste. "But in the morning, Susana. Go home. Sleep. The chef will make you breakfast, and you can come by and see me then." He smiles coolly. 

"What if something happens?" she asks half-crabbily, and he nods once at her consideration. 

"The hospital will call you, I'm sure," he says. "I left our number. The odds are unlikely. I am in the best medical hands I can be in." He seems displeased, and for a moment Susana remembers her search on the Internet for information about her father. Somewhere it had said that he did not like the medical establishment. Odd that he himself was a fully qualified medical doctor. 

She rises and crosses to his bedside to give him a dutiful daughter's kiss on the cheek. It is harder than she thinks to leave him. Even though he himself has told her to, she feels as if she is betraying him somehow. Feeling dirty in her clothes, tired in her body, she proceeds through the hospital's corridors to the parking garage. Soft announcements overhead in Spanish barely penetrate her exhaustion. The parking garage is not far away. This hospital is private and quite well appointed; her father would demand it. She wonders idly if he has medical insurance like they do in the States. Then again, he has enough money to pay for his own care. 

The overhead lights buzz unpleasantly in the garage, and Susana shivers a bit. She is alone in the garage and the echo of her footsteps on concrete ring in her ears. The Jaguar sits on the third floor of the garage. Opening the door, Susana sits down behind the wheel and blinks. Her eyes feel greasy and tired. The Jag is a more comfortable environment than the garage it is in. The engine starts up and she stares at the glow of the dash lights for a moment before putting it in gear. 

A quick cell-phone call to home gets her adequate directions. She is unfamiliar with the city, but she makes it back home without too much issue. The headlights splash on Dr. Lecter's home soon enough. 

Susana staggers inside to find the butler there with a crystal glass of chilled fruit juice for her. He offers it to her and takes her purse and keys without being asked. She pads back to her room and sits down on her bed, peeling off her clothes and putting on a T-shirt and flannel pants to sleep in. 

She supposes that her worry over her father will be enough to keep her awake. Surprisingly the opposite is true. The bed is soft and comfortable and she is exhausted. After making sure she will be awake in time to visit her father and writing herself a note to get him his pajamas and other things he will want, she falls asleep easily. 

In the morning she will see her father, but she will never sleep in this bed again. 

  


__


	14. Mariscal Lopez Avenue

  


The sun is barely lighting up the sky and morning is new. The day's birth is not far off. Susana steps from the shower and towels herself off. Then she takes a moment or two to observe herself in the mirror. There is no promise attached to today; the leaden weight of her father's condition weighs heavy on her. She did not sleep well or long last night. 

What happens now? She knows what he wants. The butler has a bag packed. Pajamas, toiletries, things like that. She will bring it to him, and sit with him, and after that she doesn't know what she is going to do. She steps into her bedroom and thinks. What now? The question will not go away. 

She takes a moment to decide what to wear. Jeans and a sort of dressy blouse. That's all she can deal with now. Dressing up is not to her favor; she did it as a little girl, but she doesn't like it now. 

The butler is waiting in the hall when she exits her bedroom. He nods politely at her approach. 

"Madam, will you want breakfast before you go?"

She sighs. The feeling of duty is strong. _Your father is lying in a cardiac care unit and you want to slop up breakfast? _Yet she knows she should eat. He would want her to eat, too. No amount of self-denial will help him. 

"Yes, thank you," she answers calmly. 

"What would you like, madam? I will have the cook fix you whatever you wish." 

She stops and stares. She feels funny telling him what to do. A girl in jeans cannot boss around a man in tails. It just doesn't work. 

"Eggs...bacon...some orange juice," she says vaguely. 

"How would madam like her eggs?" the butler asks. 

_Madam wants to know why you have to talk to me in the third person. _

"Scrambled," she says, and makes a helpless gesture. Can't he leave her alone? But he does, simply nodding. 

"Of course, madam," he says, and then he is gone. 

Her father's servants have always maintained both very high morale and an iron discipline that would put a Prussian field officer to shame. By the time she gets downstairs she can smell the spicy fragrance of sausage cooking. The butler is setting a single place with a white china plate that stares at her like an unseeing eye. He glances in her direction without making eye contact, an odd skill he has mastered. Susana finds it somewhat disquieting. 

"Coffee, madam?" 

She nods and lets out a sigh. The butler leaves the room, surprising silent in his formal attire, and returns with a carafe of coffee. Silently he pours it and arranges sugar in it for her. She blinks for a moment: does he remember how she likes her coffee? It seems so. 

"Madam, there is a bag packed for your father," the butler says smoothly. "Shall I have Ramon prepare the limousine? 

Susana eyes him for a moment and thinks. Prepare the limousine? What preparing does he need to do? Turn the key and the engine starts. Done deal. 

In thinking about it, she doesn't want to be chauffeured to the hospital. Driving herself might help. She's tired of leaving her fate in the hands of others, even the dutiful servants that work for her father. Being pampered and babied is nice, to an extent, but she is tired of it. Other people decide if her father will live or die. Other people feed her and wash her clothes. She can drive herself to the hospital.

Besides, she is curious to see what the Jag can do.

"No," she says after a moment. "Have him bring the Jaguar around. Leave the keys in it." 

The butler nods, any disapproval hidden behind his proper mask. "Of course, madam." 

It doesn't take her long to finish the meal. The eggs are good and the bacon crispy, the way she likes it. All the same, she isn't terribly hungry. When she is done, she stands up and heads out to the driveway. The Jaguar is already there. A leather grip is on the front seat, packed and ready. The engine is idling. 

Susana gets in the car, settles herself behind the wheel, and pauses. The chauffeur appears from seemingly nowhere to close her door politely. She stares at him, startled, and then flexes her hands on the wheel. The Jaguar's engine steps up a beat as she revs the accelerator once before dropping it into drive. 

She shouldn't feel the sense of foreboding that she does. Her father is all right; the hospital would have called if he wasn't. She has pajamas for him and other things he will want, and so everything will be...well, maybe not fine, but OK. Right now OK will have to do. 

Martin Page's 'In the House of Stone and Light' is playing on the Jag's stereo, and it is a pleasant enough background. Better to think of that. The lyrics make her think of the house of stone and darkness where her father was once held and she has to force herself to stop thinking about it. 

She pulls out and turns down the street. For perhaps a quarter of a mile there are only the same tall houses she is used to. Further down it is different, though. There are people gathered around in vans by one side. Susana turns her head and looks at them curiously. They are standing around with some sort of purpose; they aren't just sitting there. A little knot of four people is going to to knock on the door of _Señor_ Perez's house. She stares at them for a moment more in idle curiosity . Then she realizes what is happening, and she turns pale and slams on the gas. 

...

_Fina-fucking-ly._

That unpleasant aphorism occurs to Clarice Starling as a caravan of police cars and vans proceeds up the stately Mariscal Lopez Avenue, where the best mansions in Asunciòn stand like fortresses against the slow devolution of time. They have a list. And it's a short one, too. 

Five old men have moved onto this street since Dr. Lecter was last seen. The FBI and Paraguayan authorities have divided up their forces into three strike teams. First at one end of the street, then the other. With a bit of luck, Dr. Lecter will be captured and Susana will be saved shortly. 

The Paraguayan equivalent to the HRT is decent, Clarice thinks. Each house will be quietly surrounded and all points of egress cut off. Then a plainclothes squad of four agents will knock on the door. She finds it sardonically amusing; odds are they will have a few former South American strongmen in their net. On that, she doesn't care. The South Americans can take care of their own matters. What matters to her is her daughter. 

Five old men. Five houses. Three strike teams. The numbers are simple. They will take three houses at once at the far end of the street. A skeleton crew will be keeping an eye on the other two houses with binoculars. If they see signs of flight, they will swoop down and get 'em. Dr. Lecter can run and get caught. Or he can cower in his basement and they'll find him eventually. 

There is nothing so pleasing for a hunter as the knowledge that all their plans will soon come to fruition. That satisfaction is one Clarice can already taste. After all the pain and suffering he has caused her, both in his initial claiming of her and the recent theft of Susana, justice will be done. 

Clarice pauses and lets those words play through her head again, just for her own satisfaction. _Justice will be done. _

__She watches the first teams set up. They will behave calmly, right up until they get inside. The fact that there will be snipers surrounding each house doesn't need to be publicized. If the man of the house resembles Dr. Lecter, or if a girl resembling Susana is spotted, then everything will get a lot uglier a lot quicker. 

The first team knocks on their door. The second team does too. Clarice watches from the van. Anticipation makes her muscles tense. Action is just around the corner. Her daughter is close. She knows it. 

The first team disappears inside its mansion. There is an earpiece on the shelf of the van and Clarice sticks it in her ear. Voices in English and Spanish chatter back and forth to each other in terse metallic tones. The owner of the first house does not seem like a likely, unless Dr. Lecter has shrunk several inches since Clarice last knew him. _Dammit. _

__A black Jaguar cruises up the street, and Clarice turns to look at it. The cops may flag it down. On the other hand, they don't want to tip their hand. She tries to concentrate. The Jag is a nice one; as a car buff Clarice has to give it a once-over. XKR coupe. Nice one. Supercharged. Someone likes performance. 

The driver is a young woman. _Probably some rich man's mistress, _Clarice thinks. In profile she looks tired behind the tinted window. She turns and glances at Clarice. It takes one more second for things to click.Clarice stares at her daughter for a moment, cold recognition filling her. 

Mother and daughter stare at each other from five feet away, only the window between them. Clarice's jaw drops. For a moment she is frozen with shock. 

__She cannot see Susana's eye color with the tinted windows, but that is her daughter's face. Perfect shock and surprise are painted on her features almost as assuredly as they are on Clarice's. Her daughter's lips make a round O. 

Clarice glances up and over the car to see. The other agents have seen the car, but are they going to stop it? She doesn't know. For a second, two, three, sound will not come to her voice. 

"Susana...baby....," Clarice says, the sound barely more than a squeak. Her daughter's eyes remain on hers. Is she going to stop the car? For a moment more Clarice hopes she might, then she thinks to scream to the others to stop the Jag. A snatch of music escapes the cabin of the car, entering her consciousness crazily..._I will not rest until I lay down my head...in the house of stone and light...._

But before she can grab the radio and transmit, the Jaguar booms forward. It has been built with care to provide excellent performance, and when the XKR takes off it reminds Clarice of not so much as a car as a small jet or perhaps a bullet. It is supercharged, built for performance, and it has been lovingly maintained by Dr. Lecter.

There is one cop meandering into the Jag's path, but self-preservation kicks in when the Jaguar rockets forward. Clarice grabs the radio even as the Jaguar flees like a hunted predator. _Jesus Christ, look at that thing go, _she thinks. The Jaguar rockets down to the end of the street and turns right. 

"Stop that Jaguar!" she bawls into the mike. "That's her! That's Susana! That's our target!" 

A glance over at the ignition indicates the van's keys aren't in it. _Fuck fuck fuck. _All the same, the Jaguar would blow the doors off a crate like this anyway. Clarice opens the door of the van and spills out onto the asphalt. 

A smaller police car has already begun to pursue the fleeing black car, but Clarice can tell from the whine of the tinny engine that it's not gonna cut it. The car is one of those compact jobbies they sometimes give patrol cops to ride around in. The Jag can outrun it in second gear, probably.. Goddam police forces with cheap cars. She runs over to a car that has a snowball's chance in hell of getting the job done: one of the cars the Paraguayans must've bought from the US or something. A Caprice with a police interceptor engine, a big old V-8. 

The Paraguayan cop behind the wheel is surprised to be expelled, but Clarice expels him with a snapped _fuera, necesito el auto. _It isn't until his ass is on the street and hers is behind the wheelsand she smiles and adds _por favor, gracias. _

_She isn't thinking right. I have to get her and make her understand. She'll be all right. Jesus, I just saw her. She was right fucking here! _

__Clarice guns the ignition and slams the car into drive. The tires squeal as she hits the gas. She doesn't know the roads here in Paraguay. She doesn't know the area or where the hell Susana is going. But Susana probably doesn't know the city that well either. 

All the same, she has no choice. She guns the engine and the Caprice roars back pleasingly, eating up ground. Clarice tightens her hands on the wheel. The radio chatters at her in Spanish and she ignores it. When it yells at her in American English she ignores that too. Bowman can suck up and deal. Her mission is clear.

She will catch her daughter. 

She will catch her daughter because she _must. _

__Clarice races to the end of the street and swerves right. 

  


  



	15. Chase

  


The needle on the Jag's speedometer jumps, the tach revving with it. Susana's steed can carry her far from danger. All the same, her heart is racing. The Caprice is a dark shadow behind her. Why does her mother have to do this? Her father does not have many years left. Maybe not even a year, even. She doesn't know.

What happens if she is captured here? Will they force her to go back to the United States? Almost assuredly. She isn't a Paraguayan citizen; she can't demand to stay here. 

What about her father? Will they take him to prison? Probably. 

The thought of giving herself up occurs to her. They might leave him alone if she does not lead them to him. But no, then he will be defenseless in his hospital bed, sick and weak. Easy prey. 

But he can help her nonetheless. While screeching around a corner, Susana grabs the cell phone she took from him last night and fumbles the plugs into place. The Jaguar is equipped with a handsfree unit with distortion levels so low as to make a grown man weep. 

She has to call home to get the number to the hospital. 411 works in the US, but it doesn't work here and she doesn't know what number to call. The butler helpfully looks it up for her, sounding perfectly calm. It's easy for _him _to be calm, he isn't being chased by the fucking FBI. 

But she gets the number. It isn't easy to dial at a hundred miles an hour – or whatever it is, the fucking speedometer is labeled in kilometers and Susana doesn't remember how to convert. All the same, the tones sound in her ear and she is rewarded with a soft electronic purr. Her father's hospital room is private, and he has a phone in his room. He will know what to do. She is not sure exactly how she knows that; the assurance is vague but solid, like the outlines of a rock masked by fog. She connects it with her young girlhood, when he was Papa, a figure larger than life, the template on which her view of the entire male half of the species would be cut. Papa _always _knows what to do. 

He'd better.

A red light springs to life behind her, a tangible reminder of her mother's relentless pursuit. The phone rings once, twice, three times. Where is he? They haven't gotten him already, have they? They can't. She needs him now. 

The Caprice cuts closer and Susana lets out a small shriek. Pressing the gas pedal makes it retreat again. The engineers at Jaguar built the car well; it doesn't shudder or anything. If not for the cars swiftly whipping past her she might not realize she is going as fast as she is. 

Her father picks up. "Hello?" 

"Papa," Susana says. "It's me." 

He takes an audible breath. He can tell something is wrong. That doesn't take razor-sharp observational skills to notice; her voice is tense and nervous. 

"Are you all right?" 

She has to take a moment to swerve around a slow-moving Peugeot before she plows into the goddam thing. "Mama is here," she says. 

"I see," Dr. Lecter says far too calmly. "Where is she?" 

Her fingers tense on the leather-wrapped wheel until they ache. "Behind me in a police car." 

"All right. Stay calm, Susana. Do not come here, not right off. I shall leave the hospital and meet you." 

She blinks for a moment. Leave the hospital? He can't. He just had a heart attack. "You can't leave the hospital," she protests. Her voice is shaky and screechy and she has to force herself to calm down. Her pulse is racing in her ears. She realizes she is almost screaming at him and feels guilty. 

"I can, and I will, and I _must. _It's all right, Susana. I have made arrangements for such eventualities. Now, then. Are you on the highway?" 

"No, some main drag," Susana says, and scans what is in front of her. Where is a street sign? She can't see one and her mother is close behind. Dr. Lecter calmly rattles off a few names before she sees one on a sign and repeats it back to him. 

"All right," Dr. Lecter says calmly. "Turn right. Do you know where the Plaza de los Heroes is?" 

Plaza of Heroes. She understands the Spanish phrase all right, but she doesn't know where it is. "No," she says, trying to keep her tone under control. 

"You're not far from it. It's a very large plaza, full of shops. And people. We will be able to hide there and escape should be easy. I make it a rule to keep a car nearby." 

Susana blinks for a moment. "But...I've _got _your car," she says in a bewildered tone. 

Dr. Lecter sounds amused. "I have more than one, you know," he says. "Now then. Look for Alvarenga street. Do you see it?" 

It's hard to see any street names moving this fast. Still, there it is, two streets down. The Jag's tires screech. The Caprice presses ever closer. For a moment she despairs. Doesn't her mother realize what has happened? They can't be caught now. It's not fair. Is her mother going to drag her away from him anyway? 

"There is a small yellow bungalow," Dr. Lecter tells her. "The house number is fourteen forty-four. The front door is locked and nailed shut. Go around to the back. The back door is locked with a combination lock and an alarm. The combination in both cases is your own birthdate – oh three, oh five, oh four." 

She blinks. "But...she'll get me if I get out of the car," she protests. 

Her father seems pleased. "Not if you park a few houses away," he says calmly, as if he has planned this entire thing out. "She won't shoot you, and she won't run you down. You are sixteen. She is fifty-five. It is extremely doubtful that she can best you in a footrace. She will stop the car and chase on foot." 

"How do you _know _that?" Susana asks. What if he's wrong? What if her mother uses a stun gun on her or something? She isn't sure what tools her mother has at her disposal. 

Dr. Lecter's sigh over the phone is heavy, as if the question – or the answer – is weightier on him than it should be. "Because that is what she is _trained _to do, Susana. That is what FBI agents do." He sighs again, heavily. "Since she chose that path....she is eminently predictable." 

She looks over at a house to catch the number. Eighteen something. Then she sees the nondescript little yellow bungalow. It looks ugly to her. Surprising that he would own such a thing. 

"I shall attempt to obtain a cellular phone in the hospital so that I can call you," Dr. Lecter adds. "Once you are in the house, there are clothes, money, and ID. If you go down to the basement, you will see a shelving unit. Pull it away from the wall. There is a tunnel there which leads to the house on the next street, which is also mine. There will be a car in the garage there." 

The thought of pulling over is frightening. The Jaguar is safe, a steel cage in which she can keep her mother at bay. Or should she? For now she _has _to. If her mother catches her she will try and catch her father too. At the least, she will never see her father again, and she can't do that. Not right now. 

_No one else has problems with their parents like this, _she thinks. 

She takes a deep breath. This is not the time, to say the least. Pull over, run down to the yellow bungalow, loop around to the back, lock the door behind her. How hard can that be? 

It'll be easy. Right. Sure. 

Leaving an eighty-thousand-dollar car in _this _neighborhood? That hurts. But with her pursuer behind her, she has little choice. Hopefully it'll be back. Or hopefully he has insurance. 

Susana wrenches the wheel to the right and slams on the brakes. The brake pedal trembles as the ABS comes on,vibrating her foot. The Jaguar stops neatly, all things considered. Her body is not so carefully engineered: she can feel her nerves thrumming, the electric taste of apprehension on her tongue, and her legs don't want to move when the car finally stops. 

She has only a few seconds. She may be faster than her mother, but if she screws this up it will be over quickly. The time is now and there is no going back. 

She opens the door and begins to sprint towards the bungalow as quickly as she can. 

...

Clarice Starling's borrowed Caprice shrieks around the corner, seeking the Jaguar darting away. Her lips skin back from her teeth and her pulse pounds in her ears. Her daughter is here. She knew it. Susana is also fleeing. That Clarice cannot hold her responsible for: she's been brainwashed by Dr. Lecter just as Clarice once was. Clarice will find her. Clarice will catch her. Clarice will heal her. 

Now if only this goddam car could go just a little bit faster. 

On open ground, she might not have much chance: the Caprice has a big-block V8 Police Interceptor, but the Jaguar is built for those who have about sixty thousand dollars more to spend on a car. Fortunately she is not on open ground, and her daughter is not as skilled a driver as she is. Though the Jaguar might be able to smoke the Caprice normally, Susana has to do so while dealing with city traffic. 

_Why is she running anyway? _The thought dances unpleasantly in the back of Clarice's head. Her training tells her what to do in this situation: cut off the car, chase the perp, wrestle them to the ground, cuff them, read them their rights. But this is her _daughter. _Her daughter should not be fleeing from her. The situation wavers between grim reality and sheer ludicrosity. 

"Just pull over, Susana," Clarice whispers to herself. "Just do it, okay?" She doesn't bother trying to yell it; Susana can't hear her anyway. The police car may be less refined than the Jaguar, but it's got plenty of oomph. Problem is, the Jaguar's got plenty of oomph under the hood too. 

Her daughter will not stop. She is a better driver than Susana; she's been driving since before Susana was alive. Can she force the car to stop? Possibly. Clarice finds that she doesn't care that much if Dr. Lecter's oh-so-precious Jag gets dented or scratched a bit. She punches the gas and the tranny drops down a gear. The engine lets out a satisfying roar. But as soon as the taillights of the Jag move closer, it's only a moment before Susana hits her own gas. Unfortunately, Susana's got her beat on lateral acceleration. She may be able to track her but she can't overtake her. 

Even so, Clarice presses on. Somewhere along the line Susana will make a mistake and Clarice can get her to stop. Somehow or another. But for now, all she can do is chase. 

The black sports car wheels right suddenly, cornering a lot better than this beast can, but Clarice takes only a moment to clear the corner and continue pursuit. What the hell is going on? This is some residential street; she can't be serious about this. 

Looking around makes it clear. Jack Crawford's dry voice echoes in her head, the way it always does when she thinks of Dr. Lecter's file. _Dr. Lecter is quite well off. He is known for purchasing inexpensive properties, usually vacation cabins or small homes in blue-collar neighborhoods, and employing them as safe houses, with money, identity papers, and clothing there so that he can access them as necessary. The safe houses that were found in Argentina have built and expanded on this method. _

__Is that what Susana wants? It makes sense. He might have set up a couple of his safe houses with clothes and identities for his daughter. _Her daughter, _she flares angrily at the thought. But how is Susana supposed to get in now? Or maybe that's what she wants. 

The Jag's taillights flare. Clarice watches the car slow and stop, hitting her own brakes so that she doesn't shoot past. Then the driver's side door opens and the girl behind the wheel spills herself out onto the weedy asphalt. She gains her feet and begins to run. She does not look back. Oddly, that hurts Clarice more than she would think it would've.

Clarice slams the police car to a final stop, realizing with some horror what Susana means to do. The Caprice can keep up with the Jaguar; Clarice cannot footrace her daughter for very long. She's not just not as young as she used to be. Susana is sixteen, her body young and strong and teeming with life. She scrambles out of the car and begins to run. 

"Susana!" she yells. "Stop! I just..I just want to talk." 

The girl continues to flee down the street. How far is she going? Can Clarice catch up to her? She's worked the past few years in an office, and it shows. Her legs don't want to run as fast as they once did. Her lungs begin to protest almost immediately. Susana is almost forty years younger; the advantage is hers. 

"Susana, _please! _Listen to me," Clarice pleads. "I'm your mother." 

Even as she presses herself to run further, she wonders if it is not already too late. Susana spares her not a glance but flees like a thousand other criminals she has pursued. Even as she forces herself to continue, knowing in her heart that it is futile, she can hear Dr. Lecter laughing. 


	16. In the Name of the Father

  


  


Sometimes, it comes down to running. 

Susana runs as fast as her legs will carry her, not paying any attention to her mother behind her. She simply concentrates on moving her legs as fast as they will carry her, feeling her breath gasp in and out of her lungs, her body moving in a symphony of muscle and tendon. Behind her, her mother's footsteps pursue, competing in her ears with her own pounding heart. But her father is correct; her mother cannot catch her in a footrace. 

A few people turn and watch curiously. No one gets in her way, though. She curves around to run up the driveway, ignoring the front door. It will be locked. He said so, and he is right. The back door is closed with a simple screen door, sheet metal and cheap screen. Susana scrabbles to open it. The door beyond, in the small porch, is far sturdier: it is made of thick steel. Mounted next to the door is a keypad. Hurriedly, Susana punches in her own birthdate and waits for a few tense seconds. Here, she can do nothing. The door will open, assuredly, but all she can do is stand and wait. 

"Susana!" Her mother's voice sounds hoarse and wheezy. That makes sense; she's been running. How far is she? Susana can't tell. 

A _beep _and a click and the door opens. She enters the house and shuts the door behind her. There are ample locking devices on this side of the door to ensure her mother cannot follow, even if she figures out the code to unlock the door. To run the bolts and bar the door takes only a few moments. Susana exhales. For the moment, she is safe. 

Why does it have to be like this? Her father is sick. Why couldn't her mother just let her have some time with him? Despite what he says, Susana isn't convinced she is going to spend the rest of her life with him. Well, the rest of _his _life, anyway. 

But for now she can't leave him. Not weakened as he is, and with the FBI closer than ever before to him. For now she feels a duty to stay by his side, at least until the situation is more under control. For now, she can't think about her mother. 

But it isn't easy, not now that her mother will be pounding on the door in a few minutes. 

The house isn't much: small and cheap. Fake wood paneling grace the walls. There is no furniture. Silence weighs heavily down on her. The air is stale and dust motes dance in it. She glances through the empty rooms to the front door. The windows are boarded up and the front door appears to be nailed shut. He had modified this house to be no more than it was now: a place to take temporary refuge and flee. It seems almost tomblike, and she wonders idly if there are any dead bodies in the house. 

The basement. He told her to go down to the basement. One door opens onto a bathroom; the other onto a kitchen that is as neat as it is empty. In the kitchen is a door that leads down a flight of stairs. Her shoes echo on the risers as she proceeds down. 

The basement is also empty, save a pile of cardboard boxes piled up at one ends. Susana doesn't need an invitation to go there. Knocking down the boxes rewards her with a wooden chest and a small, half-size door that resembles something out of Tolkien: a finely made wooden door leading into a dark tunnel. 

Opening the chest reveals what she needs for now. There is clothing that is clearly his: a suit, a pair of warm-ups that she stares at, and an overcoat, should her father need to flee when it is cold. There is a small leather bag full of cash and identity papers. Some have his face; some have her own. Then there is a paper bag with the letter S written on it in ballpoint pen. She recognizes his oddly machinelike writing even as one letter. 

Taking the bag, Susana extracts its contents and stares at them uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then distaste crosses her face as she realizes what he has laid out for her. A long black dress and ugly black shoes and black cotton stockings are the chosen ensemble. 

_Ewwwww. We're going to have a little chat about this, _Susana thinks. 

There is a piece of cloth that she cannot place – black on one side, white on the other. There is another piece of cloth that she can't figure out the purpose of, either. Then a medallion and a crucifix fall from the bundle and clatter on the floor. She stares at it for a moment before comprehension strikes. Despite herself, despite the situation, despite the fact that her mother is upstairs probably calling for a wrecker to demolish the house, Susana can do nothing but sit on the floor and laugh hysterically, the palms of her hands crammed against her mouth. 

It's a nun's habit. He wants her to dress up like a nun. 

She goes back and checks the clothing he left for himself. Sure enough, the shirt is black with a Roman collar and what she thought was an overcoat is a priest's gown. Or whatever they call it. It's brilliant, she thinks. South America is heavily Catholic, and everyone will look at her and think 'nun' and leave it at that. They won't notice her face, and they probably won't notice that she has maroon eyes. They'll see a nun, smile abashedly in the fact of such holiness, and go about their business. But it's also sickly ironic: of all the denizens of this continent, she probably knows the least about the Church. How is she supposed to pass for a nun? Never in her life has she even recited the Lord's Prayer all the way through. 

Still chuffing laughter, she removes her own clothing and puts the habit on. Instructions in his handwriting help her get the veil right and arrange the cord around her waist. Helpful details are provided: the waistcord has three knots, symbolizing poverty, chastity, and obedience. It doesn't sound like her sort of life in any case. She stuffs her own clothes in the paper bag to bring them along. 

She looks at herself in the mirror and places her palms together, rolling her eyes heavenward. 

"Bless you, my child," she says, and bites her lip so that she will stop laughing. They can't find her down here in a nun's habit laughing her ass off. She has to get moving. Opening the door reminds her of Tolkien, again: the little wooden door, half-size, oddly British somehow opens onto a dark tunnel with a faint dot of light at the end. How far is it? It's hard to tell. All the same, her oxfords grit on the floor, steadily moving ahead. 

...

As Susana's disguise consists of a nun's habit, so does Dr. Lecter's consist of a priest's garb. He has several of these safe houses in the city. It is easier to do it this way: any of the houses has clothing, identity papers, cash. 

He supposes she will not like the habit, but hopefully she will understand that playing on the strong Roman Catholicism that was Spain's gift to South America will enable them to easily escape their pursuers. Besides, there is something droll in it that pleases him to no end. 

All the same, things are not well. He is not as strong as he was. Even the walk from the hospital to the bus line served to tire him out. Changing was more difficult than he had expected, as if he was donning not a black blazer and a Roman collar but a bulletproof vest akin to the one Clarice wore so many years ago. 

And now Clarice is here. 

In some ways, he reflects, he should not be surprised. She was a hunter, and taking Susana from her would have provoked this response. It is said that the most dangerous place in the world is in between a mother and her offspring. She hurt him once in leaving him, twice in taking their daughter. Now, will she return for a third blow? What form might it take? Depriving him of his daughter again? Depriving him of not only his daughter, but his freedom? 

It is a pity, Dr. Lecter thinks. For eleven years, she was untroubled by the lambs. She was happy with him. Now, she has returned to her quest, invaded his sanctuary, and threatens everything he holds dear. Once again, it is her task to craft his doom. 

All the more reason he must evade her, this one last time. 

Dr. Lecter adjusts the priest's collar as he enters the market at the Plaza de los Heroes. It is the perfect place in which to lose pursuers: vendors in their stalls, crowds of people in and out. The noise of commerce floats over the plaza easily. Now all he has to do is keep an eye out for his daughter. She should be able to figure out where the Plaza is; the safe house he directed her to is close enough to it. 

He is strangely unconcerned about Clarice. As an FBI agent, she is far too predictable. She will continue to believe that Susana has barricaded herself in the house. The idea that he might have purchased the house across from it as well, and had a tunnel built, is not one that will occur to her easily. No, Clarice will continue to pound on the door even as Susana makes it through the tunnel to the second house and discovers the automobile parked in the garage. Closing his eyes for a moment, he flits through his memory palace. The car there is an elderly Buick. It will do to get them out of the city. Perhaps into Argentina, even. 

Blending into the crowd is something Dr. Lecter does easily. A few people smile at him and nod, seeing the doddering old cleric he wishes them to see. Just for fun, he makes the sign of the cross over a few of the children and mouths whatever Latin phrases come to mind. 

Yet he is watchful for both his daughter and his wife. Ex-wife, he supposes, although that phrase is not to his liking. Perhaps Susana will balk at the habit. It is a possibility. When she was young, with him, she had never so much as entered a church. Has Clarice brought her to one? He doesn't think so; Clarice had inherited the rigid moral structure of the Lutherans but none of the dogma. 

It is preferable that way. There will be less for her to unlearn. 

He spots Susana over by a small group of scamps, who seem to want something from her. For a moment he wonders if the FBI is near. Instead, as he approaches, it seems they simply want to know if she has gum. Her Argentine accent is stronger than it was as she explains she does not. 

Two maroon pairs of eyes meet. Her mouth quirks, and for a moment she puts him achingly in mind of her mother, not much older. Clarice standing outside his basement cell with her best bag and her cheap shoes, wearing a long skirt and matching jacket. _We have a hard problem in Behavioral Sciences...._

__He smiles and shakes his head once. Now is not the time for reminiscing. Where Clarice is, the FBI will follow. 

"Hello, Sister," he says, and tries not to grin. 

"Hello...father," Susana riposts drily. He suspects he will hear rather shortly about her displeasure with his choice of her clothing. 

"Did you get the car?" 

She nods. "It's parked over there," she says, and gestures. He nods. "I liked the other car better." 

"No matter. Perhaps we should be leaving," he says calmly. "You may drive." 

It does not bother him to be leaving Asunciòn. Even though there were things here he quite enjoyed, and a rare feeling of safety, he does not regret leaving the way he regretted leaving Florence. Leaving behind the Jaguar does consternate him; the Jaguar was much to his liking. All the same, it can be replaced. Possibly he can arrange to have it sold at auction where he can purchase it again under another identity. The house was similarly an annoyance to lose: he had extensively refurbished the house to his liking. Still, they are things and can be replaced. His daughter is with him, and that is sufficient. 

Will she stay with him? Dr. Lecter thinks that she will, at least for the time being. And that is good, because circumstances have emptied his quiver. He cannot move to the harshest measures even if he wanted to. He has no place in which to secure her, and to use the same unflinching honesty he focuses on others, he does not have the internal wherewithal. He feels weak as a kitten. His arms are leaden and his chest filled with bronze. He will have access to drugs again, assuredly. He will have access to a mansion in which he could keep her hostage if it came down to it. But the strength to confront, challenge, grapple and prevail? He is not so sure that will come back soon, if at all. He has seen her carrying heavy packages with little effort. Is his wiry, outsized strength echoed in that supple young form just as his labyrinthine mind is echoed beneath that face so similar to his wife's? 

Perhaps. What is worse is that his own strength has fled. The hale and hearty demeanor he puts on is an act, for her sake. A mercy, when you come down to it. It is better that she not know. 

They turn the corner and approach the Buick where it is parked on the street. It is somewhat dilapidated and down at the heels. Dr. Lecter does not like the car, personally: its odor is that of an old car: sun-baked seats and dirt. Even so, it has a powerful V8, and while it is not in the same league as the Jaguar it has a decent amount of power. 

The objectionable aroma assaults his nostrils and he turns his head in distaste. Even so, the Buick is enough of a steed for now. He adjusts his form on the passenger seat as his daughter pulls out into traffic. 

"I can't believe you made me wear a nun's habit," she says, only half irritably. 

He plucks at the Roman collar, which feels tighter than he would like. "Surely you remember how Catholic Buenos Aires was," he says. "All of South America is much the same. The Church is a great factor in the lives of the people." 

"Not us," Susana says, accelerating smoothly as she picks up the highway. 

"No, not us. But it does allow for us to travel easily. They will see us and think _nun and priest, _and that is all. They see the clothing and do not pay attention to the person in it." 

She lets out a sardonic chuckle. "I figured," she says. "I had to bless three babies and a two-year-old before I found you in the plaza." 

Dr. Lecter finds that amusing. "Very well," he says. "The Argentine border is not far away. The border authorities have almost assuredly been notified of our presence. However, I do not think that clearing the border controls will be a problem, not for an elderly priest and a virtuous young novitiate." 

Susana makes a brusque sound in her throat that sounds more like a snort than the doctor cares for.

But in the end it is largely as he believed it would be. The drive to the Argentine border is short. The border patrol station is manned by uniformed personnel with machine guns. Dr. Lecter spies his own picture – still two faces behind, thankfully – clearly tacked up on the bulletin board behind the guards. Susana's school picture is next to it. Yet the guards smile pleasantly at the gray-haired priest and the young nun, clear their throats and mind their manners. Susana carefully recites the story he has given her in the car: Father Rodrigo had visited Asunciòn on ecclesiastical business. Regrettably he missed his train back and so she was driving him back to Argentina before returning to her own convent. The guards fear eternal damnation, and so they open the gates and wave them through without a second thought. 

As Paraguay passes into the doctor's past, he turns to give it a single glance. The Buick heads into northern Argentina. Once again, he has given his pursuers the slip. Once again, he is free despite their best efforts. 

"So where are we going now?" Susana asks, observing the scenery of her native country. 

Dr. Lecter smiles softly. "Somewhere you remember," he replies.

  


  


  



	17. The View at Lago Moreno

  


Clarice is _livid. _

__The cavalry had arrived, all right, far too late to do any good. They had inventoried and investigated. Dr. Lecter's beloved Jaguar now calls a Paraguayan impound yard home. A team of FBI technicians, specially flown down, are going over it now. Soon it will be loaded onto a plane and brought back to the US. 

The police had shown up to find her hammering on the door, circling the house and seeking a way inside. It had been futile. Eventually they had knocked down the door and gained entry, but by then it was useless. All they had was an empty house, an identity of Dr. Lecter's that she knew was useless, and a few of Susana's hairs that had been found on the basement floor. 

The tunnel was new. But all they could do was catalog and study and add to a database somewhere. They were no closer to recovering her daughter. In fact, everything they _had _accomplished was now zeroed out. They were back to square one. 

Dr. Lecter had vanished, and he had taken Susana with him. 

_Again. _

__To let her mind play over the sight of her daughter in Dr. Lecter's Jaguar is painful. The look upon Susana's face had not been happiness. It had been shock and fear. The look a thousand bad guys had given her when the FBI came calling unexpectedly. Her own daughter had regarded her as the enemy. 

It is much easier to be livid. It is _better _to be livid. She can be the consummate professional, furious over how badly this operation went – one of their primary targets slipped out right in front of them! That is much easier than being the mother of an estranged daughter. Was it only a few weeks ago that Susana was at home, and everything was fine? It seems like centuries ago.

Now, she is in a borrowed office at the main police station in Asunciòn, bent over a map of Paraguay. She must figure out where to look next. Dr. Lecter would almost assuredly flee the country. Whenever law enforcement has come close to tracking him down, that is what he has always done. He fled the United States shortly after his escape from Memphis. He fled Florence when Pazzi tracked him down. He fled Buenos Aires when Clarice awoke. He will flee Paraguay now. 

It makes her feel better to think that way. The doctor is cunning and sly, but he is not without his own patterns, and he is not so hard to predict as he might like to think. 

The airports have been checked, but Clarice doesn't think that was it. He did not know they were coming. In fact, Dr. Lecter was in a bad way himself, according to his staff. He'd been in the hospital for a heart attack. Odd to think that the _other _was human, after all. 

Yet he isn't in the hospital anymore. That isn't a bad thing, either. It puts pressure on him, and anything that puts pressure on him is good for Clarice. She can't let herself think about him being human too much. She can show him much oil and kindness when he is in custody, along with the best medical care that the US Medical Center for Federal Prisoners has to offer. Until then, he is her prey. 

If Dr. Lecter left Paraguay, and Clarice thinks he did, he did so over land. If Dr. Lecter left Paraguay over land, then he had three choices: Argentina, Bolivia, or Brazil. The map makes one choice glaringly clear: Asunciòn is hard on the border with Argentina. He could've hopped the border easily. 

Or maybe that's too obvious. Maybe he was _expecting _that. Maybe now, he and Susana are in a car in the rural regions of Paraguay, perhaps making a break for Bolivia. Brazil she can rule out. Susana is a bright kid, but Clarice doesn't think she can learn to speak Brazilian Portuguese like a native in a couple of weeks. 

But she _can _speak Rioplatense Spanish like a native, because she used to be one. 

Clarice Starling locks her grief and sadness in a box and lets her anger fuel her. Her finger stabs down on the map. Buenos Aires? Possibly. In such a situation Dr. Lecter would want to go somewhere he knew. But he also has to know that there is an FBI presence in Buenos Aires. 

Even so, she will check there. Is there anyplace else he might go in Argentina? She closes her eyes. Where else did he like? She pushes aside the unpleasantry of the memories. Yes. They had a beach house – a freaking beach _mansion – _in Mar del Plata. That's one other place to check up on him. The third choice she remembers is Bariloche. They'd had a house on Lago Moreno. He had always liked the mountains and the lake. 

Her finger stabs down on the sites on the map. Her voice and mind are grim as she speaks, breaking the empty air in the room. 

"I can find you," she says, her voice trembling. "I can find you yet, you cemetery mink." 

....

  


The view is _breathtaking, _Dr. Lecter thinks. 

For eight years, he dwelled in a basement cell, hungering for a view. When he regained his freedom, it was a view that he sought – the lavish architecture of Florence; the simple pleasures of the Chesapeake shore. Here in this house on Lago Moreno, the view is equally intoxicating. When Clarice was still with him, he owned a home in this area. After her departure, he had purchased another under an identity she had not known about. The grounds are large and manicured, the way he has always liked them. On one side of the house is the lake; on the other the mountains of the cordillera. The property has a dock, but the doctor has no boat to take advantage of it. But the view...ahh, the view is as good as he could ask for. 

Susana had expected to return to Buenos Aires, the bustling capital of Argentina that Dr. Lecter had loved better than any other. He would have enjoyed the opportunity to do so, personally. All the same, age has mellowed the doctor in certain respects. He knows full well that his former home will be crawling with FBI. At fifty or sixty, he might have been self-confident enough to ease back into the capital, relying on his instincts to allow him to hide out right under the noses of his enemies. At eighty, with a daughter who does not have the razor-sharp instincts of a four-decade fugitive, he is not so bold. 

Besides, he can hide here. Will Clarice remember this? She may. He has learned the hard way that she can surprise him. 

He has taken some measures to hide his whereabouts. The house is rented in an alternate identity of Susana's; one a few years older. The Buick that carried them over the border was abandoned shortly thereafter. Dr. Lecter had another dropsite with clothes and identity papers and plenty of cash in Argentine pesos just over the border, and with that they were able to purchase a battered Peugeot. It is too plebeian to really be to his liking, but it was serviceable enough to get them to Lago Moreno. 

He sits out on his rented deck, a glass of wine at his side. It is a bit inferior to his usual tastes, but the wine store they found does not meet his rarified tastes. All the same, the Bariloche area does tend to draw the wealthy who live in Buenos Aires, and the wine is not bad by any stretch of the imagination. 

In this moment, he knows peace. He has slipped his pursuers just as he has so many times before. This is the first time he has done so with someone; most of the time he has been alone. It was harder to flee with a companion. Then again, the entire reason he had for setting this into motion was that he did not want to be alone. 

Dr. Lecter takes a long sip of the wine, lets it rest on his tongue for a moment, and closes his eyes. The water is quite attractive. Beyond it, the mountains. His eyes trace over the jagged peaks, comparing them to the memories he has and storing them away for future reference. In this moment he has peace and tranquility. 

He remembers coming here when Susana was a child of four. She had enjoyed the water then. She had shrieked and laughed and splashed. Normally, he had thought such childish acts somewhat gauche, but even then he had learned that his own daughter occupied a different space in his own mind and so there were different rules for her. 

The sliding door behind him rasps open. Susana is back from shopping; she insisted on better clothing than the nun's habit. He had given her some money and told her to have a good time. It had occurred to him that his daughter could, if so she chose, drive back to Paraguay and give herself up to the authorities – to her mother, in other words. 

All the same, he had been partially curious himself. He had remolded Clarice so that she would choose to stay with him. He had been unable to remold Susana as easily as he had thought, and he had been loath to move to the harshest methods with his own flesh and blood. Then, of course, the matter of his heart attack had temporarily forced her to abandon the issue. 

She has not. Nothing gives the doctor reason to believe she is doing anything but staying with him voluntarily. Does she sense his weakness? Perhaps she can. _He _certainly can. 

Even a week ago, he was able to muster much more physical force than he can now. His remarkable strength – pound for pound strong as an ant's – had never fled him. But it has now. A week ago, he could have grappled a normal man to the floor and stood a better than average chance of prevailing. Not now. His heart has been damaged, and with it his strength. Samson's hair has been cut. 

He takes a moment to eye his daughter. She is wearing jeans and a cotton blouse. Her shoes are absurdly chunky. This displeases him: he far preferred women in elegant, feminine clothing, and this extended even to footwear. Yet he does not want to spoil the moment over small things. 

And in truth, he cannot force her to comply with his wishes now. He has no drugs. He does not have the strength to force an injection on her even if he did. He cannot hypnotize her. For now, sympathy for him is the only card he has left to play. 

"How...how was shopping?" he asks. 

Susana smiles at him and shrugs. "Fine, I guess," she says. "I picked up a few outfits. Just enough to make sure I have clothes to wear. I also picked you up some clothes." 

Dr. Lecter raises an eyebrow. "How did you know my sizes?" he asks. 

"From what was labeled on your priest getup," Susana answers readily. "Plus, I just took my best guess. It'll have to do, unless you have another house up your sleeve." 

"I see," Dr. Lecter says. "Well, what sizes did you purchase?" The numbers he receives are his own. He nods a bit, pleased by her wit, and gestures at the vast expanse of his view. 

"Do you remember this?" he asks. 

Susana nods slowly. "Yes," she says. "_You _liked it most of all. I remember skiing. You insisted on buying me skis and a ski suit, and Mom thought it was silly because I would outgrow it. And hiking in the summer, I remember that. But summer is backwards here." 

Dr. Lecter chuckles and nods; doubtlessly the past years in America have accustomed her to winter in December and summer in June, rather than vice versa. To him, it seems unnatural. He has lived so long in South America that it has become his own view. 

"Do you like it here?" 

"The view is beautiful," Susana says. "It's just like I remember." She stops then, and her tone changes. "I...I would really like you to go to the hospital," she says. 

Dr. Lecter sips the wine again and shakes his head. "I cannot," he says, and his tone is both simple and final. 

"We can admit you under another name," Susana suggests. "Medical stuff is confidential, isn't it? I...," she stops. "You look kind of pale. Not yourself. You need drugs, and rest, and doctors--," 

Dr. Lecter holds up a hand to cut her off. For a moment he thinks of Prospero and Miranda, of _The Tempest. _Miranda had been charmingly naïve. He had thought her more experienced. 

"I can rest here, as I can anywhere else," Dr. Lecter says firmly. "Drugs...if we get the opportunity, I can obtain drugs in my own way in a more untraceable manner. I assure you that the FBI will find out about my condition, and I assure you they will be looking for a man seeking cardiac care." 

She does not reply to him, but looks concerned. Dr. Lecter eyes her calmly. How much does she know? 

He had not checked out of the hospital; his doctors would have advised him strongly against it. He had attempted to put the best face on things, but he is as capable as they are of reading a medical chart. His heart had suffered grave damage, and he does not have much more time at all. In a way it is ironic: during his entire life he scoffed at the medical establishment. Yet now, he needs their intervention. 

Argentina is not far enough for the FBI's purposes. They will eventually track him across the border. He needs an airport. What international airports are nearby? Of course they will be watching the airports in Buenos Aires and Asunciòn. Where else can he go? 

_Is _there anywhere else he can go? Or has the fickle hand of fate which saved him so many times finally dealt him a losing hand? 

In observing his daughter, he believes that there is more of the tender heart that existed under Clarice Starling's armor than there is of his own cold exterior. No, she cannot know the truth. She will fall apart. 

Perhaps there is something more, something he has not thought of. Perhaps he can slip his pursuers as he has so many times before. Nothing comes to him now, but that does not mean a few days here may not give him some idea. 

And if not...if this finally is the end...is this such a bad place to die? Dr. Lecter thinks it is not. This was a place he has loved, after all. Some of his happiest memories have been here. Susana as a young girl, Clarice as a happy wife; this has been a good place. 

And the view _is _breathtaking. 


	18. To Dreams

  


A lucky break has happened Clarice's way. It's about time, too. The Argentine border patrol remembered a priest and a nun crossing the border shortly after Dr. Lecter and Susana escaped. The border patrol had remembered that both of them had strange maroon eyes. Clever, she has to give him that. Not clever enough. 

She'd suspected Buenos Aires, but she had her doubts. It is a big city and he knows it well. On the other hand, there are already FBI agents there, and the Asunciòn task force is packing up shop and heading to Argentina. That leaves two possibilities: Mar del Plata, where they had a beach house, and Bariloche. She's willing to bet it's Bariloche. 

Memories flood Clarice's brain. Susana as a little girl, wearing a bulky but cute ski outfit. She'd thought buying a child her own skis was ridiculous; she'd outgrow them quickly. _He _had thought it was amusing and cute. Dr. Lecter calmly standing in front of the picture window of the home they'd owned on Lago Moreno, taking in the view with a glass of wine and a pleased mien. A hike along the mountain trails: Dr. Lecter surprisingly natty in well-made hiking boots and L.L. Bean pants; Susana a bundle of energy scrambling along the trail, her own voice rising to her ears: _Susana Alvarez, you stay back here with us. _

__The memories are disturbing because of their very normality. Had she once been part of a happy family with Dr. Lecter? Of course not. The entire bedrock of that life had been corrupted by her brainwashing. The same brainwashing that she fears Susana is undergoing. It might've looked happy on the outside, but underneath lay something unspeakable. 

Yet, as the car she is in drives towards Bariloche, she finds herself wondering. What will Dr. Lecter say when the cuffs are finally locked on him again after all these years? Will he be cold and mocking, as he was half a life ago? Or will there be something like those years in which he played a loving husband and father? 

She dismisses the thoughts to consider her daughter. Her daughter needs her. Her daughter cannot end up under Dr. Lecter's spell. It won't end that way. It _can't _end that way. Clarice hasn't fought since her awakening to raise the girl and see to it she has everything she needs for that to be the final result. 

On the other hand, she knows a few things now. Susana has been affected by her captor enough to refuse to return voluntarily. Knowing that makes it easier;she can plan for it and pad the emotional blow. For the time being, Susana will need to be treated like a cult victim. It's not her fault. She'll need to be closely watched and deprogrammed. It's possible that she'll need further attention. Someone in Behavioral Sciences has suggested a good psychiatric hospital in Maryland that's very good with troubled teens. As usual, someone knows someone there, and they have informally agreed to admit Susana once she is successfully rescued and repatriated. 

It won't be easy. But she knows it's coming, and that helps. All the same, it's the 'successfully rescued and repatriated' part that she has to work on now. If her luck holds out a little bit longer....

Lago Moreno is where Clarice has supposed they would go. He's been there before. He likes the expansive nature there: the water, the mountains. The view. After all those years incarcerated on the other side of the world, Lago Moreno was the view Dr. Lecter coveted. 

Agents have already begun to seek out their prey in the mountains. Will they get lucky? She sure as shit hopes so. Above everything is the hope of reunification with her daughter. That is what all this is about. That is what this has _always _been about. Even the capture of Dr. Lecter, the crown jewel of criminal fugitives, is secondary to that. Clarice Starling wants her own lamb safe and sound. 

As the car jolts on the rutted country road, her mind is already churning. Where would he go? Have they gotten a list of recent arrivals to the areas? Rentals, that's the ticket. Dr. Lecter prefers to rent his hideaways. It's easier on a short-term basis to rent, that's for sure. 

The radio chatters in its queerly metallic tone. "Base, this is team two. We have a possible sighting of RACECAR." 

RACECAR. The operation's code name for Susana; a bit of wry humor after she blew past the team like a race car driver. Clarice didn't think it was funny then. She doesn't think it's funny now, either, but she dismisses it. She leans forward, her eyes widening. Her nostrils flare, even though there is nothing to smell in this car other than sweat and old vinyl. Her heart begins to race. 

"Any sign of FISHER?" That's Dr. Lecter; in a nod to his cleverness. His code name is in honor of Bobby Fischer, the chess grandmaster. Clarice thinks for a moment about Dr. Lecter and chess; he had taught her to play. Was he a grandmaster? She didn't know, but he was pretty damn good. 

"Negative." 

Clarice leans forwards. "Where the hell is that coming from?" she asks the driver. "What's their twenty?" The mike is too damn for for her to reach from the back. 

The guy riding shotgun asks for her; it isn't far away. Clarice doesn't need to ask; the driver turns the wheel and the atmosphere in the car shifts. Clarice bites at her lip. She doesn't want to be a nag, but all the same, she does. _Is it her? Are they stopping her? Where is she? Is she safe? Stop her and get me over there quick.. _

__The mike chatters again, but in Spanish. That's OK; she can understand Spanish just fine. It's a local policeman, offering to make the stop. The car in question is a Peugeot that's seen better days, and Clarice frowns at that. That's not his speed. Susana doesn't care, though; her car at home is a twenty-year-old Civic. 

There is a sense of purpose here in the car that wasn't here before the announcement. Is some street cop going to bring down Dr. Lecter on a stroke of dumb luck? Such things happen: after years of searching, it was a 21-year-old rookie cop who brought in Eric Rudolph. 

According to the radio, the stop is taking place up in the mountains, on a small mountain road. It isn't too far away, though. The tension presses in on Clarice, tickling her stomach. She can taste an electric tickle in the back of her throat. 

According to the cop's report, Susana—the suspect—no, wait, the possible-- pulls over without argument, which isn't like Susana. Then again, she may realize that while she could outrun the cops in a Jaguar, she ain't gonna do it in a rustbucket Peugeot.

Seconds pass like ponderous centuries. Clarice can see it in her mind's eye. The cop walking up to the car. _Carnet y registraciòn, por favor. _The cop studying the young woman behind the wheel for a moment or two, trying to compare her to the picture in his patrol car without making her unduly suspicious. Although if it is her daughter, she already _will _be. Other cars will be unobtrusively slithering to the scene just in case Susana decides to cut and run. 

Clarice tenses. She can feel the urge and desire in her stomach. _Let it be her. Please. Let it be her. I need this. _

__The radio crackles to life. "Name is Linda Minetti," it says. "The ID checks out, but I think it's her. She has maroon eyes. Shall I detain her?" 

"Hell yes," Clarice mutters, straining forward. The tension in the car kicks up a notch, and the engine roars into a lower gear as the driver stomps the pedal. All the same, it is far too slow for her liking. The scenery is bucolic, and Clarice finds herself staring around at it, fidgeting nervously. 

Is this it? Where is Dr. Lecter? He can't be far. But all the same, Susana will be safe. In her arms again, as it should be. Her need will at long last be fulfilled. 

It seems somehow prosaic and small. After all this – after Clarice has crossed half the world – it comes to an end on a quiet mountain road. When you come down to it, it's not unlike the mountain region in which Clarice grew up. The mountains are her home. _Montani semper liberi. _

__The car takes a curve, and there it is. A police car, and beyond it a battered Peugeot. Other police cars are parked around it, here to watch the successful recovery of Clarice's only daughter. A knot of uniforms and suits are gathered in a small clearing perhaps twenty feet away from the cars. Clarice's stomach lurches as the car pulls to a stop. The emergency brake rasps and the door opens. 

Her knees tremble as she steps from the car. What happens now? Will Susana be glad to see her? Brainwashed into resentment? Silent? Her stomach is electric with tension as she approaches. The knot of men moves aside as she comes closer, parting like the Red Sea to allow the reunion. 

And there it is, after all this time and distance: Susana is sitting on the ground, staring at nothing, her hands cuffed behind her back. Clarice stops for a moment and stares: they put handcuffs on her daughter as if she was a common criminal? Then she pushes forward, running to her daughter's side, and crouches on the grass. 

Susana's eyes skate across hers for a moment and then go back down to the ground. She tenses as Clarice comes near, perhaps expecting to be struck or yelled at. Clarice simply holds her daughter close. The rare joy of having her daughter in her arms again courses through her. Whatever comes next is unimportant. Little details. Susana is safe again, and that is all that matters. Tears come to Clarice's closed lids, and for a few moments she simply enjoys her daughter's presence. 

Then she reaches for her handcuff key. Susana doesn't need to be manacled, for Christ's sake. The handcuffs drop off into the grass like an unpleasant detail. Then she moves back and holds her daughter's arms. 

Susana looks confused and lost, like a thousand other arrestees over the years. She doesn't seem to grasp exactly what has happened, as if she has had a monstrous shock. That's how it usually is: an arrestee is usually trying to figure out what the hell lies ahead of them. But Susana isn't an arrestee. She won't go to jail. Clarice will help her. 

"Baby," Clarice says. "Honey, what the hell were you doing? Are you all right?" 

"I guess," Susana says, her tone faint and lost. 

"It'll all be okay," Clarice says soothingly. "I know, you're confused, but I've missed you so much, and now we'll go home, and we'll get you through this, and I'll help you, Susana, I'll be there with you, you don't have to do this alone--," 

Lloyd Bowman's hand is unobtrusive on her shoulder and his voice circumspect in her ear, as if she hasn't been rambling like a hysterical soccer mom. "Clarice? What can she tell us about FISHER?" 

Susana stares at the Asian man as if he is an alien. She says nothing. Clarice blinks for a moment, tries to gain control of herself, and swallows. It's very likely that Susana will lie to protect him. 

"Susana," Clarice whispers. "Where...where is your father? Where's Dr. Lecter?" 

Susana lets out a shuddering breath and looks down at the ground again. 

Clarice leans forward, her blue eyes probing her daughter's face, her hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Now Susana, we know he had a heart attack. I promise you...I _swear _to you...he'll get medical care. We can take care of him, too, you know. Now just tell me where he is. We'll put the cuffs on him and take him right to a hospital. He won't have any legal troubles until he's on his feet. We're civilized people, you know that." 

Susana Alvarez lets out another shuddering sob and brings up her hands, cramming the heels of her hands into her eyes. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to. Clarice' brain reconfigures, she looks at her daughter, and she sees, and that is all she needs. 

Susana is wearing a blue chambray workshirt, blue jeans, and work boots. All are dirty. On her wrist is a Rolex. A _man's _Rolex. Clarice can read the words _Oyster Perpetual Datejust _on its face. In the open collar of her workshirt are two rings suspended on a gold chain around her neck. Seeing the rings sends a chill through Clarice Starling's brain. 

One ring bears a stone and the words _Johns Hopkins University, 1957. _Long before Susana was born; before Clarice was born, for that matter. But the place and the date are as easily identifiable to Clarice Starling, who has studied Hannibal Lecter for years. It was on a warm summer day in 1957 that the nineteen-year-old prodigy Hannibal Lecter graduated from Johns Hopkins University, going on immediately to the medical school there. 

The other is a man's wedding band. Simple, gold, and unadorned. It is much like any man's wedding band on the fingers of a million different men. But Clarice recognizes this one. 

The world seems to spin for Clarice Starling, even squatting on the ground as she is. Her knees feel a million miles away. Behind her, she can hear voices of policemen: _What's in the car? Any weapons? No. There's a sheet, a pair of work gloves...and a shovel. _

__"Oh God," Clarice Starling says, unsure of what else she _can _say. "Susana...is he...did he...," 

Susana's eyes touch her own, pained and stunned. Clarice has seen that expression before, too, on the wives turned widows and children turned orphans. Tears well in her eyes, and Clarice finds answering tears welling in her own, although what they are for is not totally clear. Susana's lips move and break. 

"He...he had a heart attack in Asunciòn," she begins, and her voice is faint and papery. "And then...then he got us across the border, here. He spent last night looking out at the view...the water and the mountains. He said that in the morning...in the morning we would double back and try to get back to Paraguay and see if we could make it to Bolivia. If we could, then he would check into a hospital there and we could fly out." 

Clarice can't answer. Her mind is whirling, and it occurs to her exactly what has happened; she has hunted down her daughter's father to the point where he could run no more. This...no, she never wanted _this. _She wanted her daughter back. Susana will have to understand that. But now, she realizes, mother and daughter share an unhappier bond. 

"That's what he said we would do," Susana continues. "He had Bolivian money and we could have gotten by, as long as we could cross into Paraguay. It would've been easy. But...but his heart must've been damaged...more than he ever told me. We had dinner and then we went to bed. He told me I ought to dream of Bolivia. In the morning, I went in to see him." 

She shudders. "I woke up early so we could head back and make Bolivia before the end of the night...but...when I went in there--," her voice hitches and labors and thickens. She stops for a moment, and the police around her take a respectful step back. This is not something they want to deal with. It is probably the least favorite job of any policeman. 

Clarice is crying openly herself. It isn't merely sympathy with her daughter, although that is certainly there. It is something else, something deeper: despite all the man's evil, she _had _lived with him for eleven years, and he _had _given her a daughter. 

Susana finishes the sentence after taking a moment to compose herself. 

"But when I went in his bedroom," she begins anew, "he had...," she stops and shakes her head. "He had gone on already...to whatever dreams there are." 

__


	19. La vida es sueno

  


Time passes – the only trick that truly is magic. For Clarice Starling, everything has seemed to return to normal. She returned to the US with her daughter, and after a bit of counseling, both she and Susana had returned to their life in Virginia. 

The subject of Dr. Lecter was a prickly one: for the past two years, Susana has staunchly maintained the same story. Dr. Hannibal Lecter died of a heart attack, and she buried him in the mountains of Bariloche. She has refused to specify a location, even at the coroner's inquest that was held a few months after mother and daughter returned. Susana refuses to recognize American jurisdiction over her father's death, holding that he died in Argentina. There is also the simple loyalty of a daughter: she does not want him dug up and his corpse tormented and defaced by American coroners. 

That has been troublesome for Clarice. She has faint, awful memories of holding her own father's skull, and it is hard to argue with her daughter that she should assist the authorities in allowing them to do the same thing to her father. They've searched on their own, but they have not had any luck in finding his body. Bariloche is a big place.

Susana has been singularly unhelpful in providing the location of Dr. Lecter's body, but she has repeatedly given out what she is willing to. She testified at a coroner's inquest. She underwent a polygraph and hypnotic therapy. All have indicated the same thing: Dr. Lecter died the morning of Susana's recovery. 

All the same, a few things have changed in her life. For one, Dr. Lecter's official status is now _Fugitive, presumed dead. _After beating the bushes throughout South America for several months after his alleged death, the search has dwindled to a few agents who have other work to do. The popular feeling in the FBI is that Dr. Lecter did indeed die, but that his daughter is simply being an obstreperous teenager in refusing to disclose the location of his body. 

There is evidence of the doctor's death, to be sure: the sheet in the back of the car went straight to the FBI labs, where several dyed black hairs proved to be a match for Dr. Lecter's DNA profile. His medical records from Paraguay certainly indicate that death was a possibility. His heart had been severely damaged in his heart attack. 

Perhaps the best argument for the doctor's passing is simply the fact that Clarice _has _been able to go on with her life. Susana did not fight her on returning; she simply hung her head and came back to the United States quietly with Clarice. She has answered Clarice's questions honestly. Why had she done this? She had wanted to see her father desperately. Had he tried to brainwash her? He had tried but then stopped. She had stayed with him of her own free will. The only question she has refused to answer is the one Clarice wants the answer to most. _Where is his body? Can I see that he's dead with my own two eyes? _The answer to that question has always been the same. _No, Mom, he's dead and I don't want them to desecrate his body. _

There have been no mocking letters, no taunting phone calls, no coming home to discover a note in copperplate in lieu of her daughter. Everything has been normal. She goes to work, Susana has gone to school, and Susana is always there when she comes home. They eat dinner, they talk. Occasionally Susana will go to a friend's house, but she does always come back. This is Clarice Starling's pleasant little upper-middle-class life, so stultifying and perfect that anyone would be crazy to think that anything could be wrong. 

All the same, Clarice Starling has felt eyes on her in the night. 

Other things have changed, things that occur more normally in life. In June of this year, Susana graduated from high school. She was accepted at several schools and chose Johns Hopkins. That has given Clarice a bit of pause. Sure, she wanted Susana to go to the best school she could have, but...there? Where he went? It is somehow disturbing, although Clarice keeps her disturbance down deep in the pit of her stomach. 

Getting used to Susana not being in the house has been troublesome. Clarice will sometimes open the door to her daughter's room, which is much the same as she left it. Her heart will pound as she sees that Susana's things are there but she is not; all that moves in the room are dust motes. Then she remembers that Susana is in her dorm room at college. Just a short drive to Baltimore, or a phone call, or an email can set her mind at ease. 

But it is then, standing in her daughter's empty room, that she can hear Dr. Lecter's voice most clearly, aged and spiderlike, echoing the shadows of her nether mind: _Ah, Clarice, can you be so sure? _

Sometimes she resists the urge. Sometimes she gives in and calls. People in the office kid her about suffering empty nest syndrome enough. She doesn't want to smother her daughter. Yet all the same, there are times she is irrationally yet perfectly convinced that Susana's roommate will tell her that her only chick and child has flown to South America again, or that an elderly man in a natty suit dropped by to say hello. 

Everything is normal. Everything is fine. _Better _than fine. But there is always that one shadow over her life. In a way, Clarice has thought it a particularly fitting revenge for him: even from beyond the grave he remains in the back of her mind. If it _is _from beyond the grave. 

But today is a Friday, don't you know, and she is going out to Baltimore to visit Susana. Behavioral Sciences has just caught another big one, but Clarice doesn't want to hang around for the afterglow of putting away another baddie. No, a weekend in Baltimore will suit her nicely. The shopping there is good, and it'll be nice to see her daughter. 

The trip on the Baltimore-Washington Expressway is quick and quiet; Clarice likes to drive fast. Soon enough, the towering buildings of the university are in her view. To check in with campus security takes only a moment; her FBI badge, combined with the fact that she pays Susana's tuition here, gets her in easily. Day has faded into dusk as she approaches Susana's dorm. 

Next to the dorm is a parking lot, and for a moment Clarice glances over at the cars. She has always been a car buff. _Nothing interesting, nothing interesting, junk junk junk...wait. _

Parked between a rusting Chevrolet and a red Jeep Wrangler are two Jaguars. Clarice stops and looks those over. Minor differences between the two indicate they are different model years, but not by much. They are both supercharged sedans. Someone's got money. Then she looks at the plates, and a chill runs down her spine. 

The first one just has plain old boring Maryland plates. The second one has vanity plates that read _SUSANA A. _

__Clarice stops and looks at the car for a long while. Her hands feel numb; she doesn't even realize her cell phone is in her hand or that she has dialed. Only when the friendly secretary down at Behavioral Sciences answers does she realize what she means to do. 

"This is Investigator Starkey," she whispers. "Can you...can you run a license plate for me?" 

A few beats. "Of course, Claire," the grandmotherly voice replies. "What's the number?" 

Clarice swallows. "It's...uh...it's a vanity plate. Maryland plate, SUSANA-A." 

"Like the girl's name?" 

Clarice nods before realizing the secretary can't see it. "Like...like my daughter's name," she whispers. 

_Clickety-clickety-click _of keys over the phone, and a long pregnant pause. 

"Oh," the secretary sounds surprised. "That comes back to a Susana Alvarez, at....211 East Lombard Street, Box 2665, Baltimore. It was registered just a few months ago, it looks like." 

Clarice blinks for a moment. A few months ago, like when Susana went out to college. And wait...211 East Lombard? She's heard that address before, during the times she was a street agent. It is...it takes a moment to come. 

_It's a UPS Store mailbox. A front. A private mailbox. Just like..._

_Oh Jesus. _

__A great bubble of acid burns in her stomach. "How about this one?" she asks, and rattles off the license plate of the second Jaguar. 

_Clickety-clickety-click, _and then a pause that seems to go on forever. 

"All right, Investigator Starkey, that comes back to a William G. Leeds. Two years old, it looks like." The secretary's voice is amused. "Are you planning to buy a Jaguar, Investigator Starkey?" 

Humor seems very, very far from Clarice Starling at this point. Her voice chokes and catches. In fact, her own _feet _feel miles away from her at this point. 

"No," she says, and her own voice sounds far too much like a powerless whisper for her preference. Swallowing is hard; her throat is dry. She hasn't...no, he can't be...has Susana...did she...what the _fuck _is going on here? 

Clarice breaks from the parking lot and runs into the dorm's lobby. Students mill around lazily, back and forth, chatting. They are comfortable in jeans and sweatshirts, and more than a few look curiously at the older woman in a pantsuit. The kid behind the desk looks at her expectantly. 

"Can I help you?" 

Clarice takes a shuddery breath and forces herself to calm down. It's just a fucking Jaguar. It doesn't mean anything. She doesn't know for _sure _that it's Susana's Jaguar. There are lots of girls named Susana Alvarez out there, right? 

If it is, then she's got some explaining to do. She doesn't have the money for a car like that. There are a few possibilities as to how she could've gotten a car like that, and none of them are particularly appetizing. 

"Umm, yes," Clarice stutters. "I...I'm sorry. Long drive. I'm here to see my daughter. Susana Starkey. Room 514." 

The desk clerk nods. "One moment," he says calmly, and presses a button. 

"Susana Starkey, you have a visitor," he says. A few moments later, her daughter's voice speaks metallic through the cheap speaker. Clarice closes her eyes and tries to calm down. She's freaking out about this, and there has to be some rational explanation. Maybe the car isn't even Susana's. 

"Is it my mom?" she asks.

The clerk looks at Clarice, wordlessly suggesting that she may answer. "Yes, Susana, it's me," she says, forcing herself to sound calm. 

"Sure, send her up," Susana says. The clerk gestures to where two elevator cars sit chummily side by side. Clarice walks over to the elevator and presses the button for her daughter's floor. A long moment passes, and Clarice finds herself uneasy. Why does it always take so long for the doors to close. 

The doors do rumble shut eventually, but Clarice wishes they hadn't closed so quickly. Just before they close, the doors of the car next to hers open and disgorge a passenger. A man wearing a dark topcoat and fedora walks slowly from the elevator car with the hesitant steps of an older man. He is wearing formal shoes of some type, not the sneakers universally favored on college campuses: Clarice can hear the clicking. He does not look back, and Clarice doesn't know _why _she suddenly leans forwards to slam her palms against the closing doors, but deep in her gut she knows. 

But the elevator doors do not work in her favor. The doors close calmly, and all Clarice touches is scarred aluminum. A short, strangled sound of exasperation and confusion rises from her throat –_Nik! _

__Then the motors below grumble and wrench her car upwards, away from the dark figure. She slams her palm in frustration against the door. By the time she gets back down there he will be gone. 

Is she overreacting? She saw a couple of Jaguars and an old man in a fedora. Not exactly enough for a search warrant. Maybe she is overreacting. Maybe she's just seeing ghosts in every corner. 

But maybe she isn't. 

The door opens on Susana's floor, and Clarice glances out, illogically sure that the old man will be on this floor. Nope; it's just students congregating in the concrete halls, chatting, and staring at Clarice with some curiosity. Clarice swallows for a moment. She can smell old beer in the hallways, and from not a few doors the sweetish scent of burning marijuana emits. Rock music of varying flavors escapes from closed doors. The carpet is brown and industrial. Just a typical dorm hall in a typical dormitory. 

"Hi," she says to one knot of students. "I'm Susana's mother. I was wondering...did any of you see an older fellow just leave here? In a dark coat and hat?" 

The students are four. Two boys, three girls. One girl has long blonde hair, one has shorter brown hair, and one has brown hair cut extremely short. The two boys are muscular and large. The girl with blonde hair has apparently decided to celebrate the upcoming Halloween by cramming a pumpkin under her shirt, and the others are touching her artificially distended abdomen. 

They glance at her in puzzlement. "No," they chorus one by one. 

Clarice stops and eyes them for a moment. Nothing in their expressions suggests they are lying. For another, they'd have no reason to lie, either. They have no reason to protect Dr. Hannibal Lecter. 

Though she knows who might. 

Her daughter's door is closed. The names _Susana _and _Lisa _occupy different sides of a whiteboard on the door, so as to allow those who wish an audience with either girl to leave their names. Clarice stares at it for a moment or two in thought. Has _he _been here? She cannot sense his scent on the psychic winds. But if he is alive...

Clarice knocks on the door, and it is but a moment until her daughter opens the door and smiles out at her calmly. 

"Hi, Mom," Susana says chattily. Her eyes travel up and down her mother's face and an expression of mild alarm comes over her own. "Is something wrong? You look...nervous." 

Clarice swallows. Is it that obvious? She's learned to hide her emotions and bury them down deep; a useful skill in the Lutheran Home and a more useful skill for an FBI agent. Can her eighteen-year-old daughter really pierce those defenses so easily? 

_Perhaps someone's been teaching her a little something, _a sly little voice whispers from the back of her mind, where the monsters roam. 

"Is he here?" Clarice rasps, looking at her daughter and feeling her heart pound. 

Susana looks somewhat puzzled. "Who?" 

"Your father," Clarice says. "I...I saw the Jaguar." 

Susana smiles guiltily and looks down at the floor. "Oh, that," she says dismissively. "It...it _is _mine. He...he told me where his money was hidden and wanted me to have it." 

Clarice stares at her daughter with wide eyes. "He...he wanted you to have it?" she queries. Her voice is shaking. 

Susana looks irked. "Don't look at me like that," she says. "He would have wanted me to have his money. He _did _want me to have his money. I didn't want to tell you. You're an FBI agent. It's better that you don't know. C'mon, who else is going to want it? His victims are all forty years dead." 

Clarice pauses. "Did he come and give you that Jaguar himself, Susana?" she asks. 

Susana blinks, and Clarice studies her very carefully. Her own face is white and sweaty. Susana's eyes look hurt and wounded, and her lips make a moue in distaste. 

"Mom," she says coolly, "he...he's gone. You know that." 

"Was he? I saw _two _Jags in the parking lot. Side by side. And I saw a guy in a dark coat and hat leave your dorm." Clarice's voice trembles. If this is an act, it is damn, damn good. Is there a hint of amusement in those maroon eyes? The same sort of amusement she saw all those years ago in the darkest dungeon of the Chesapeake asylum? It is hard to tell. 

"Probably some guy dressing up as Darkman for Halloween," Susana points out. "It _is _next weekend." 

"Susana, just tell me," Clarice says, and the pleading in her voice bothers her tremendously, but it's all she can do. Has he somehow slipped her noose again? Has he come _here_, spying on her in her own home? Has her own daughter, the girl whom she crossed half the world to have in her arms again – has her own daughter been complicit in hiding him? 

Susana sighs and looks hurt, as if her mother has reminded her unnecessarily of pain she would have soon left behind. "Mom...we've been through this." 

"Just tell me, Susana," Clarice repeats. "I...I need to know. I won't even arrest him. He can live his life. I just...how am I supposed to live knowing he's out there...close...and watching?" 

The plea falls on deaf ears. Susana shakes her head and for a moment tears well in her eyes. Her voice is thicker than before when she speaks. 

"I don't know how else to tell you this," she says, and her mouth draws down into a quivering bow. "Mom...Hannibal Lecter died two years ago." 

The visit over that weekend just before Halloween is tense, the question still dancing between them. Yet Clarice Starling cannot shake the idea that he is there, that he has been watching...and that some day, this whole dance may begin again. When she says her goodbyes to her daughter she is torn: has she strained the relationship that means more to her than anything else on earth over a silly fantasy? 

Perhaps she has, but it is not too late to mend. 

But let us leave Clarice Starling as she heads back to her quiet little middle-class life and remain instead with her daughter. Susana is taking a course in Spanish literature; her own Spanish has remained at a much more fluent level than before. She takes out her newly purchased laptop – the latest and most powerful model available – and opens up a text file containing a reading she must do for her class. Calderòn de la Barca is a poet she has grown to like. She was to read _La vida es sueño_ for class. Her lips form the words as she reads the poet's work, the words quiet and respectful in her clear alto voice, accented with upper-crust Buenos Aires. 

_ ¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.   
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,   
una sombra, una ficción,   
y el mayor bien es pequeño,   
que toda la vida es sueño,   
y los sueños sueños son._

  


__It's odd, Susana thinks. What is life? An illusion. A shadow. A fiction. And the greatest good is small: that all of life is a dream, and the dreams are but dreams. 

She likes it better in Spanish. She thinks of her father for a moment, and is wistful. She thinks of her mother, who is running around scared to death that he is alive and looking in on her, ready to swoop down and take possession of Susana again. How little her mother understood, really: that proposition rested on the idea that she _could_ be taken possession of, owned, dressed in pretty little dresses and molded into anything other than what she chose to be. 

Dr. Lecter had once thought he could whisper through the chrysalis, but whatever emerged was beyond him and his power. Isn't she, too, a result of that chrysalis and of that joining, as surely as any human being is hatched from the chrysalis of what he once referred to as tedious sticky fumblings? 

Susana chuckles, and concentrates on her Spanish reading. For her own pleasure, she repeats the last clause. 

"_Que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños sueños son," _she repeats, and closes her eyes to appreciate the phrase for a moment. It is both beautiful and correct.

Life _is _a dream. 

  


FIN 

  


__


End file.
